Introduction to bada

A Developer's Guide

Ben Morris, Manfred Bortenschlager, Cheng Luo, Michelle Somerville, Jon Lansdell

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780470977385
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Programming in C
• Index: Computer Science

An expert introduction to Samsung's new mobile platform

Bada is a new platform that runs on mass market phones and enables you to build cutting-edge applications for mobile devices. As an access layer, bada has all the advantages of native coding and provides the power of multi-tasking and multi-threading. This book serves as a complete introduction to the exciting capabilities of bada and shows you how bada offers commerce and business services with server-side support. The authors walk you through the complete set of platform APIs and detail the architecture of bada. Code fragments are featured throughout the book as well as examples that utilize all of the major APIs, from sensors to maps and from phonebook to billing.

• Introduces Samsung's new platform, bada
• Explains the bada framework, its APIs, and the bada architecture
• Walks you through how bada is a logically structured mobile platform that allows you to build exciting apps for mobile devices
• Features code fragments and numerous examples that address all the major APIs

Discover how bada boasts the richest set of end-to-end service, commerce, and billing APIs with this book!

Chapter 1: The Mobile Difference

Mobile is different. This chapter summarises what makes mobile software and development different from developing ‘conventional’ fixed software for desktops or web applications. We also suggest some software development best-practices that are particularly appropriate for mobile, and that can help you stay in control of your project.

1.1 The Mobile Context

Some 20 years on from the birth of mobile, hardware and telecoms have changed out of all recognition. In all sorts of ways, mobile usage has also changed the way that people behave. Even so, the exploitation of mobile services has hardly begun. The apps revolution of the last several years, dominated by iPhone but certainly not limited to it, is a clear indicator of things to come. The real revolution, however, will be the arrival of apps and services for the mass market – and that’s what makes bada a potential game changer.

From a practical perspective, the bada platform and accompanying ecosystem provide a great foundation for mobile development. So what makes mobile different?

First, mobile hardware is different from desktop hardware. It’s not just that mobile phones fit in your pocket. The relentless drive to fit more and more functionality into smaller and smaller physical packages has led to almost continuous innovation. In consequence, mobile storage, mobile display, and mobile power technologies are different from their big brothers on the desktop. When you are developing for mobile, it is essential to understand how these differences can impact the way you design your apps and the way you write your code.

Second, mobile usage is different. Users use mobile differently from the way they use fixed desktop devices, and they consume mobile services differently. Even the way that users buy and pay for their mobiles and mobile software is quite different from what happens on the desktop. In fact this is a crucial difference, because without the willingness of users to casually buy mobile software, there would be no apps revolution! Again, these are differences that will impact the way you design your apps and write your code.

Above all, however, the mobile opportunity is different. Let’s illustrate that difference with an example – mobile services. We can divide these into two groups: new services that are only meaningful in a mobile context, and others that are traditionally used in fixed or web browser-based environments but that can now be extended to the mobile dimension.

Location-based or map services are good examples of the first group. The idea of location-based services (LBS) has been around for over a decade now. Few would doubt the potential of such services to add unique value on mobile, where services and information can be delivered filtered for specific locations, providing information that is related to a user’s current position and that addresses an immediate need. However, only a few such services have turned out to be really big hits, and the most obviously successful example – in-car navigation – isn’t network based at all, and so delivers almost nothing of the real promise of LBS. The reason is simple. In the past, the technologies and ecosystem just were not ready. Today, however, everything is in place for LBS finally to deliver its promise.

Examples of the second group are the booming social network services (SNS) stemming from the Web 2.0 movement that gave birth to blogs, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter – you name it. Such applications and social networks can now increasingly be invoked and used from mobile handsets, either through web sites customised for mobile browsers or through standalone apps. But in these cases too the new dimensions that mobile brings have barely begun to be exploited.

These examples also point to another difference between mobile apps and desktop applications. On the desktop, your word-processor or spreadsheet or database application, and your first-person shooter or adventure game, are big and complex, and the bigger they are, the better; they do everything, integrate with everything, and each would be very happy if it was the only application you ever needed. Mobile apps are almost exactly the opposite of this – they are small and focused pieces of software, designed to do one thing, and do it well.

The most successful mobile software respects the specific characteristics of mobile, including hardware constraints, different ecosystem structures (for example, shorter product lifetimes, but also shorter time to market), and the different usage context that dictates a different style of user experience. Ideally, whatever its application area, mobile software adds value by directly addressing a specific user need or by improving the mobile experience for the user – in terms of cost, effort, or time savings, increased flexibility, improved means of communication, or just more fun.

1.2 Characteristics of Mobile Software

Mobile software has a number of characteristics that make it very different from desktop or web-based software, the most important being:

1. technological differences;

2. differences related to usability and user experiences;

3. differences in the ecosystem.

In the following sections we touch on each of these topics in more detail.

1.2.1 Technological Differences

Mobile handsets are getting steadily more powerful, with processor speeds of up to 1 GHz, multi-gigabyte memory and removeable memory of 32 GB or more now becoming common on high-end devices. Advances in display technology have also enhanced the user experience. The latest display technologies such as Samsung’s Super AMOLED[1] deliver vastly better contrast, more efficient energy consumption and less sunlight reflection than older mobile displays.

As network connections get faster, the services available to users have grown to include rich multimedia streaming and games, while user confidence in increased connection security has led to an explosion in mobile eCommerce and eTicketing apps.

But it’s the advances in positioning technologies that have led to the biggest revolution in mobile apps. GPS[2] is now standard even in low-end devices and bada offers developers an easy and powerful way to develop location-aware apps through its APIs for location services.

Advances in hardware provide new development possibilities. For example, sensor hardware has become commonplace on phones, which now include accelerometers, electronic compasses, and light sensors. Sensors provide functionality not available to fixed, desktop applications, for example tilt and shake user interaction with apps.

Developing for mobile devices also provides some challenges to those used to creating desktop or web applications. Mobile hardware is improving rapidly, but compared to the desktop or to a typical server, phones are much less powerful with much less storage. On mobile, network connection is intermittent by design, compared to always-on Internet connections on the desktop. The way that the user interacts with a mobile device is also different; a smaller, touch screen and virtual keyboard input cannot offer the same experience as a full-sized keyboard and mouse.

The most important, and often overlooked, difference in mobile compared to desktop development is energy consumption and the dependence on the battery. Battery capacity on mobile devices has increased, but so have the range of technologies that consume a lot of energy: GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 3G, and multimedia support are prime examples, and some currently successful phones do not even make it through the day without needing recharging, and battery life is a frequent user complaint.

Device manufacturers are doing their best to improve battery life, but software developers have their part to play through careful use of resources. Because mobile phones typically run for days or weeks or longer without being switched off, memory leaks, for instance, can seriously compromise the phone’s performance.

1.2.2 Differences Related to Usability and User Experiences

New mobile technologies such as sensors and touch screens allow us to build better UIs and to represent information in more user-friendly and usable ways. In particular, Web 2.0 applications such as Facebook and Twitter can all now be accessed easily by mobile users using web pages designed for access on-the-go or by applications.

Users may be able to do more with their devices, but they are still confronted with a huge range of different screen sizes, input methods, and UI ‘look and feel’ approaches that can make using mobile applications a frustrating experience. Developers who follow user interface guidelines, such as those provided by bada, will create easy-to-use, consistent applications on a particular platform, but there are still many platforms available. Several initiatives such as bada, the LiMo foundation, the Open Handset Alliance, and the Symbian Foundation show a trend towards open systems to facilitate harmonisation and the easing of application development and deployment. However, mobile developers will have to deal with the problem of incompatible platforms for some time to come.

Mobile applications are also used differently from their desktop equivalents. If you are mobile and want to find information about what is showing at the local cinema, or a review of a particular restaurant, you want to find that specific information quickly and don’t want to spend time searching through information you don’t need. Your attention span for using the application is limited, so you want to be presented with location-specific information. You might also be trying to find directions, using the mobile in sunlight, or somewhere with a lot of background noise, all environmental factors that need to be considered.

1.2.3 Differences in the Ecosystem

Users expect to be able to ...