Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Smartphones – Testing'

Thesis (M.S. in Computer Science)--Naval Postgraduate School, December 2009.
Thesis Advisor: Singh, Gurminder. Second Reader: Das, Arijit. "December 2009." Description based on title screen as viewed on January 26, 2010. Author(s) subject terms: TwiddleNet, Mobile Web Server, cross network information sharing. Includes bibliographical references (p. 51). Also available in print.

Many developers today have difficulties testing their applications on mobile devices. This is due to a number of factors, such as the fact that the mobile phone market has become even more fragmented with the introduction of touch screen technology. Existing software that was designed for traditional mobile handhelds is not necessarily compatible with the newest models and vice versa. For developers this incompatibility increases the difficulty when creating software. Lack of resources for testing the application may lead to the application being limited to either just a specific model or in some cases to only one specific version of the operating system software. Without providing support for a large number of models the product may have difficulty attracting customers, and hence fail to gain the desired market share. The challenge is to find a way to make testing simple, effective, and automated on a large number of mobile devices. To achieve this test automation applicationsare needed and a test strategy must be devised. Additionally, testing is often described as never-ending since testing generally reveals errors rather than demonstrating when errors are absent. Because of this some limitations of testing are justified. In order to limit the scope of this thesis I have selected some of the most appropriate methods for testing, and will only examine these specific methods.  The focus for the testing is not specifically to find errors, but rather to confirm that the product offers the specified functionality. This thesis describes an approach to functional testing of an application for Symbian mobile devices based upon log analysis. Unfortunately, testing applications on mobile devices is still not straightforward, and this thesis does not shed any light upon how to lessen this complexity. However, I believe that both testing and development will be more and more built around use cases in the future. Unfortunately, automation of testing based uponthese use cases will be further complicated by the increasing use of touch screens and physical input (such as gestures).
Idag har många utvecklare problem med att testa sina applikationer på mobila enheter.Detta har många orsaker, exempelvis att den globala mobila marknaden har blivit än mer fragmenterad i och med introduktionen av pekskärmstekniken och de snabba förändringar som sker idag. På grund av de många telefoner som idag finns så finns det ett behov för en automatiserad testprocess då det tar för lång tid att göra manuellt. OptiCall Solutions AB har utvecklat en applikation för Symbian S60 som behöver kunna köra på många olika telefoner. Denna masteruppsats har målet att hitta ett sätt att automatisera testning av mobilapplikationer på olika enheter, mer specifikt enheter som kör Symbian S60.  OptiCaller är målet för testerna. Testmetodologier och verktyg har analyserats och kraven har samlats in på den önskade lösningen. Lösningen består av ett program som kör testskripten direkt på telefonen, mjukvara som analyserar testresultaten och presenterar dem i ett GUI, ett teststrategidokument, samt ett felrapporteringssystem. Med hjälp av dess kan testaren skapa sina egna skript för att automatisera och sedan samla in resultaten för analys. Detta eliminerar behovet för manuell testning och gör testningen effektivare, speciellt när man kör många tester. Analysmjukvaran är även integrerad med Felrapporteringssystemet för att underlätta felrapportering.

Designing good digital experiences for children can be difficult; designers have to consider children's cognitive and motor skill limitations, understand their target audience, create something entertaining and educational, comply with national and international jurisdiction, and at the same time appeal to parents. We set out to create a general framework which designers and developers can use as a foundation and testing ground for their digital products in the field of user experience. The methods used during the thesis include interviews, literature studies, user testing, case studies, personas, prototyping, and more. The results created are primarily user experience guidelines packaged in a Theoretical Framework, user testing conclusions, along with suggestions on improving the current Lego Star Wars: Force Builders application, a few in the form of prototypes.

Though the benefits of physical activity are numerous and well-known, very few adolescents are meeting physical activity recommendations. Moreover, past research shows that physical activity declines with increasing age with this decline beginning in adolescence. One approach to promote physical activity is through mobile technology such as a mobile phone. Since mobile phone ownership is relatively high (77%) and there is no digital divide by race/ethnicity or socioeconomic status, mobile phones may be suitable for physical activity promotion. Few studies have promoted PA using a mobile phone and those studies showed increased physical activity outcomes. However, more research is needed to explore the effectiveness of mobile phone physical activity promotion especially in more health disparate populations.  The purpose of this research was to develop and test smartphone game application for physical activity promotion in adolescents. The first study included various user-centered approaches (e.g. qualitative data, idea sessions) to get feedback on what was desired from the adolescents in terms of game development and design. The second study examined the degree to which mobile health studies reported on internal and external validity indicators. The last study evaluated the smartphone game applications through a mixed-methods approach. The results of this research showed that physical activity while playing smartphone game applications can yield moderate physical activity intensity. Moreover, adolescents had moderate perceptions of the games and recommended specific changes to the games. Likewise, the data suggest that smartphone physical activity game applications can be enjoyable if they are aesthetically appealing, easy to use, and foster social peer interactions. Overall, this research demonstrated that smartphone games that were developed and designed based on adolescents\' preferences and persuasive technology design principles could increase physical activity in adolescents and provides a tool for further exploration.
Ph. D.

Seamless interconnection of smart mobile devices and cloud services is a key goal in modern mobile computing. Mobile Cloud Computing is the holistic integration of contextually-rich mobile devices with computationally-powerful cloud services to create high value products for end users, such as Apple's Siri and Google's Google Now product. This coupling has enabled new paradigms and fields of research, such as crowdsourced data collection, and has helped spur substantial changes in research fields such as vehicular ad hoc networking. However, the growth of Mobile Cloud Computing has resulted in a number of new challenges, such as testing large-scale Mobile Cloud Computing systems, and increased the importance of established challenges, such as ensuring that a user's privacy is not compromised when interacting with a location-aware service. Moreover, the concurrent development of the Infrastructure as a Service paradigm has created inefficiency in how Mobile Cloud Computing systems are executed on cloud platforms. To address these gaps in the existing research, this dissertation presents a number of software and algorithmic solutions to 1) preserve user locational privacy, 2) improve the speed and effectiveness of deploying and executing Mobile Cloud Computing systems on modern cloud infrastructure, and 3) enable large-scale research on Mobile Cloud Computing systems without requiring substantial domain expertise.
Ph. D.

The easy access to the Internet, computers and mobile devices brings new technological means of ability testing. The aim of this thesis is to investigate whether there is any difference in the results when an ability test of deductive reasoning is administered with two different platforms, computer and smartphone. In an experiment with within-subjects design the differences between platforms when it came to the level of the test score and usability were investigated. In addition, the test-retest reliability in the ability test was assessed. No significant differences between the scores from the platforms were observed. However, test-retest reliability was low and between r = .372 for smartphone and r = .526 for computer. The low reliability can explain why the score levels with different platforms could not be separated. The usability results indicate that the participants preferred to take the test with a computer, rather than with a smartphone, where even the most experienced users of smartphones disfavor test delivered on smartphone. It is recommended to replicate the experiment with more participants, and also with other handheld platforms, like tablet PC.
Den enkla tillgången till Internet, datorer och smarttelefoner innebär nya tekniska möjligheter till begåvningstestning. Syftet med detta examensarbete är att undersöka om det blir någon skillnad i resultat när ett begåvningstest för deduktiv förmåga utförs på två olika plattformar, dator och smarttelefon. I ett experiment med inompersonsdesign undersöktes skillnaderna mellan plattformarna när det gällde nivå hos testpoäng och användbarhet. Dessutom studerades begåvningstestets test-retest-reliabilitet. Inga signifikanta skillnader mellan testresultaten för det två plattformarna observerades. Test-retest-reliabiliteten var dock låg och varierade mellan r=.372 för smarttelefon och r=.526 för dator. Den låga reliabiliteten kan förklara varför poängnivåerna vid olika plattformar inte kunde skiljas åt. Gällande användbarheten indikerar resultatet att deltagarna föredrog att ta testet på dator framför smarttelefon, där även de mest mobilvana svarade till smarttelefonernas nackdel. Rekommendation för fortsatta studier är att replikera experimentet med större urval, samt att även testa med övriga handhållna datorer, som pekplattor.

This master thesis deals with the analysis of mobile running applications. The theoretical part deals with the basic concepts of mobile devices such as smartphone and sporttester and their development and function. The practical part analyzes the mobile running application that are available on the market and their comparison in pursuance of questionnaire survey. Conclusions are made from the questionnaire survey that correspond to another aim of the master thesis. At the end of the work the master thesis deals with a set of recommendations which was established from long-term testing of mobile running applications. The main asset of work is formulate optimal aspects of the running applications and their usage while running as well as own evaluation of tested mobile running applications.

El dolor és una experiència desagradable que afecta milions de persones a tot el món, sobrecarregant als sistemes sanitaris i costant milers de milions als governs. Els tractaments disponibles milloren la qualitat de vida de moltes persones amb dolor, però els resultats són encara modestos. Fins i tot pitjor, els tractaments no sempre estan disponibles per a tots aquells que els necessiten. El mHealth (intervencions de salut utilitzant dispositius mòbils) té un gran potencial per ajudar a administrar tractaments, arribant a més persones i reduint costos. Per analitzar l'estat actual del mHealth i el dolor, es va dur a terme una revisió sistemàtica de la literatura (articles revisats per iguals inclosos en bases de dades científiques) i de les aplicacions mòbils disponibles a les principals botigues d'aplicacions. També s'han desenvolupat dues aplicacions: Painometer (per avaluar la intensitat del dolor), i Fibroline (destinada a millorar la qualitat de vida dels joves amb la fibromiàlgia o dolor crònic generalitzat). Les dues aplicacions es van desenvolupar seguint un disseny iteratiu; van ser sotmeses a un protocol de proves d'usabilitat per refinar els prototips fins a ser: comprensibles, lliure d'errors, fàcils d'usar, i acceptades per l'usuari. Poden extreures tres conclusions principals d'aquesta tesi: 1.- El mHealth està encara començant el seu camí. Resulta de vital importància construir un marc regulador més ben definit i unificar les seves vessants científica i comercial. 2.- Painometer és una aplicació amb bona usabilitat. Les escales incloses en l'aplicació proporcionen mesures de la intensitat del dolor vàlides i fiables. 3.- Fibroline és una aplicació que també ha demostrat bones propietats d'usabilitat. Es durà a terme un estudi pilot per provar la seva eficàcia. Si es mostra eficaç, Fibroline podria ser un gran recurs per ajudar els joves, i les seves famílies, a millorar la seva qualitat de vida.
El dolor es una experiencia desagradable que afecta a millones de personas en todo el mundo, sobrecargando a los sistemas sanitarios y costando miles de millones a los gobiernos. Los tratamientos disponibles mejoran la calidad de vida de muchas personas con dolor, pero los resultados son todavía modestos. Incluso peor, los tratamientos no siempre están disponibles para todos aquellos que los necesitan. El mHealth (intervenciones de salud utilizando dispositivos móviles) tiene un gran potencial para ayudar a administrar tratamientos, llegando a más personas y reduciendo costes. Para analizar el estado actual del mHealth y el dolor, se llevó a cabo una revisión sistemática de la literatura (artículos revisados por iguales incluidos en bases de datos científicas) y de las aplicaciones móviles disponibles en las principales tiendas de aplicaciones. También se han desarrollado dos aplicaciones: Painometer (para evaluar la intensidad del dolor), y Fibroline (destinada a mejorar la calidad de vida de los jóvenes con la fibromialgia o dolor crónico generalizado). Ambas aplicaciones se desarrollaron siguiendo un diseño iterativo; fueron sometidas a un protocolo de pruebas de usabilidad para refinar los prototipos hasta ser: comprensibles, libre de errores, fáciles de usar, y aceptadas por el usuario. Pueden extraerse tres conclusiones principales de esta tesis: 1.- El mHealth está aún comenzando su andadura. Resulta de vital importancia construir un marco regulador mejor definido y unificar sus vertientes científica y comercial. 2.- Painometer es una aplicación con buena usabilidad. Las escalas incluidas en la aplicación proporcionan medidas de la intensidad del dolor válidas y fiables. 3.- Fibroline es una aplicación que también ha demostrado buenas propiedades de usabilidad. Se llevará a cabo un estudio piloto para probar su eficacia. Si se muestra eficaz, Fibroline podría ser un gran recurso para ayudar a los jóvenes, y sus familias, a mejorar su calidad de vida.
Pain is an unpleasant experience that affects millions of people around the globe, overwhelming the healthcare systems and costing governments billions. The treatments available improve the quality of life for many people with pain, but the results are still modest. Even worse, treatments are not always readily available for all those in need. mHealth (healthcare using mobile devices) has great potential to help in the delivery of treatment, because it reaches more people and reduces costs. To analyze the current state of the art on mHealth and pain, a systematic review was conducted of the mHealth literature (i.e. peer-reviewed papers in scientific databases) and the commercially available pain-related Smartphone applications (in the main shops). Two applications have been developed for this dissertation: Painometer (an app that helps in the process of assessing pain intensity), and Fibroline (an app that aims to improve the quality of life of young people with fibromyalgia or chronic widespread pain). Both applications were developed using an iterative design; they underwent a usability testing protocol and an interview with end-users to refine the prototypes until they were understandable, error-free, easy to use, and liked by users. Three main conclusions can be drawn from this dissertation: 1. mHealth is still in its infancy. Of central importance is the need to build a better-defined regulatory environment, and to improve the translation process, bonding the academic and commercial sides of this technological milieu. 2. Painometer is an app that has good usability. Scales in the application provide valid and reliable pain intensity reports. 3. Fibroline is an app that has also proved to have good usability properties. A pilot study will be conducted to test its efficacy. If proven effective, Fibroline could be a great asset to help young people and their families, and improve their quality of life.

With advances in hardware miniaturization and wireless communication technologies even small portable wireless devices have much communication bandwidth and computing power. These devices include smartphones, tablet computers, and personal digital assistants. Users of these devices expect to run software applications that they usually have on their desktop computers as well as the new applications that are being developed for mobile devices. Web browsing, social networking, gaming, online multimedia playing, global positioning system based navigation, and accessing emails are examples of a few popular applications. Mobile versions of thousands of desktop applications are already available in mobile application markets, and consequently, the expected operational time of smartphones is rising rapidly. At the same time, the complexity of these applications is growing in terms of computation and communication needs, and there is a growing demand for energy in smartphones. However, unlike the exponential growth in computing and communication technologies, in terms of speed and packaging density, battery technology has not kept pace with the rapidly growing energy demand of these devices. Therefore, designers are faced with the need to enhance the battery life of smartphones. Knowledge of how energy is used and lost in the system components of the devices is vital to this end. With this view, we focus on modeling and evaluating the energy performance of smartphones in this thesis. We also propose techniques for enhancing the energy efficiency and functionality of smartphones. The detailed contributions of the thesis are as follows: (i) we present a nite state machine based model to estimate the energy cost of an application running on a smartphone, and provide practical approaches to extract model parameters; (ii) the concept of energy cost pro le is introduced to assess the impact of design decisions on energy cost at an early stage of software design; (iii) a generic architecture is proposed and implemented for enhancing the capabilities of smartphones by sharing resources; (iv) we have analyzed the Internet tra c of smartphones to observe the energy saving potentials, and have studied the implications on the existing energy saving techniques; and nally, (v) we have provided a methodology to select user level test cases for performing energy cost evaluation of applications. All of our concepts and proposed methodology have been validated with extensive measurements on a real test bench. Our work contributes to both theoretical understanding of energy e ciency of software applications and practical methodologies for evaluating energy e ciency. In summary, the results of this work can be used by application developers to make implementation level decisions that affect the energy efficiency of software applications on smartphones. In addition, this work leads to the design and implementation of energy e cient smartphones.

博士
國立中山大學
電機工程學系研究所
106
The High-Dimensional (HD) MIMO operation with at least eight MIMO streams is a very promising technology for applications in the fifth-generation (5G) mobile communication terminals. HD MIMO can provide a much higher spectral efficiency, thereby increasing the data throughput in practical communications. However, it has been a great challenge for antenna designers to dispose as many as MIMO antennas with low envelope correlation coefficients (ECCs) in the very limited space of the smartphone. In this thesis, promising eight and twelve MIMO antennas for the 5G smartphone are presented. The MIMO antennas are formed by using decoupled two-antenna building blocks. The building block has a small planar size of 7 x 10 mm2 for operating at 3.5-GHz band (3400~3600 MHz) and can be printed on the inner surface of the side-edge frame of the smartphone. Decreased coupling between the two antennas can be obtained without the need of an external decoupling structure. The operating principle and antenna performance of the two decoupled antennas in the building block are presented in this study. To demonstrate Multi-Gbps data throughput for the smartphone, four or six two-antenna building blocks are used to implement eight or twelve MIMO antennas. By using the MIMO testbed developed at NSYSU, the measured channel capacity of about 35 bps/Hz with 20-dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is obtained with eight antennas applied in an 8 x 8 MIMO system. In the case of twelve antennas applied in a 12 x 8 MIMO system, a 3.8-Gbps throughput (about 38 bps/Hz spectral efficiency) with a 100-MHz bandwidth and 256-QAM modulation has also been achieved. To further analyze the channel capacity and throughput of the twelve-antenna smartphone applied in a 12 x 8 MIMO system, the user’s hand effects, various indoor/outdoor scenarios, and the ECC effects are tested. The design concept of the decoupled two-antenna building block has also been applied in achieving 3.5/5.8-GHz dual-band operation for mobile and wireless local area networks. The dual-band eight MIMO antennas have been experimentally studied. The obtained MIMO performance is presented and discussed.

With the rapid advancement of mobile devices, people have become more attached to them than ever. This rapid growth combined with millions of applications (apps) make smartphones a favourite means of communication among users. In general, the available contents on smartphones, apps and the web, come into two versions: (i) free contents that are monetized via advertisements (ads), and (ii) paid ones that are monetized by user subscription fees. However, the resources (energy, bandwidth, processing power) on-board are limited, and the existence of ads in either websites or free apps can adversely impact these resources. These issues brought the need for good understanding of the mobile advertising eco-system and how such limited resources can be efficiently used. This thesis focuses on mobile web browsing. Surfing web-pages on smatphones is one of the most commonly used task among smartphone users. However, web-page complexity is increasing, especially when designed for desktop computers. On one hand, the existence of ads in web-pages is essential for publishers' monetization strategy. On the other hand, their existence in webpages leads to even higher complexity of the webpages. This complexity in the smartphone environment, where the battery and bandwidth resources are limited, is reflected in longer loading time, more energy consumed, and more bytes transferred. With this view, quantifying the energy consumption due to web ads in smartphones is essential for publishers to optimize their webpages, and for system designers to develop an energy-aware applications (browsers) and protocols. Apart from their energy impact, ads consume network bandwidth as well. Therefore, quantifying the bandwidth consumption due to downloading web ads is crucial to creating more energy and bandwidth aware applications. This thesis first classifies web content into: (i) core information, and (ii) forced ``unwanted" information, namely ads. Then, describes an approach that enables the separation of web content in a number of a websites. Having done so, the energy cost due to downloading, rendering, and displaying web ads over Wi-Fi and 3G networks is evaluated. That is, how much energy web ads contribute to the total consumed energy when a user accesses the web. Furthermore, the bandwidth consumed by web ads in a number of well-known websites is also evaluated. Motivated by our findings about ads' impact on the energy and bandwidth, the thesis proposes and implements a novel web-browsing technique that adapts the webpages delivered to smartphones, based on a smartphone's current battery level and the network type. Webpages are adapted by controlling the amount of ads to be displayed. Validation tests confirm that the system, in some cases, can extend smartphone battery life by up to ~ 30\% and save wireless bandwidth up to ~ 44\%.

abstract: This study investigated the effects of distributed presentation microlearning and the testing effect on mobile devices and student attitudes about the use of mobile devices for learning in higher education. For this study, a mobile device is considered a smartphone. All communication, content, and testing were completed remotely through participants’ mobile devices. The study consisted of four conditions: (a) an attitudinal and demographic pre-survey, (b) five mobile instructional modules, (c) mobile quizzes, and (d) an attitudinal post-survey. A total of 311 participants in higher education were enrolled in the study. One hundred thirty-seven participants completed all four conditions of the study. Participants were randomly assigned to experimental conditions in a 2 x 2 factorial design. The levels of the first factor, distribution of instructional content, were: once-per-day and once-per-week. The levels of the second factor, testing, were: a quiz after each module plus a comprehensive quiz and a single comprehensive quiz after all instruction. The dependent variable was learning outcomes in the form of quiz-score results. Attitudinal survey results were analyzed using Principal Axis Factoring to reveal three components, (a) student perceptions about the use of mobile devices in education, (b) student perceptions about instructors’ beliefs for mobile devices for learning, and (c) student perceptions about the use of mobile devices post-instruction. The results revealed several findings. There was no significant effect for type of delivery of instruction in a one-way ANOVA. There was a significant effect for testing in a one-way ANOVA There were no main effects of delivery and testing in a 2 x 2 factorial design and there was no main interaction effect, and there was a significant effect of testing on final quiz scores controlling for technical beliefs in a 2 x 2 ANCOVA. The significant difference in testing was contradictory to some literature. Ownership of personal mobile devices in persons aged 18–29 is practically all-inclusive. Thus, future research on student attitudes and the implementation of personal smartphones for microlearning and testing is still needed to develop and integrate mobile-ready content for higher education.
Dissertation/Thesis
Doctoral Dissertation Educational Technology 2017

Age-related physical and cognitive changes hinder the ability of older adults to operate smartphones. While many user interface (UI) heuristics exist today, there is a need for an updated set designed specifically to assess the usability of mobile devices for an older audience. Smartphone evaluation heuristics for older adults based on age-related changes in vision, hearing, attention, memory and motor control were developed in this thesis by analyzing literature on age-related physical and cognitive changes impacting smartphone usability. Support for heuristics was found by gathering information on how older adults use cell phones through interviews and an online survey. It was demonstrated that strength of support for some heuristics increases with age. The evaluated heuristics provide usability practitioners and designers with a framework for evaluating the usability of smartphones for older adults.

INTRODUCTION: While mobile device use by physicians increases, there is an increased risk that errors committed while using mobile devices can lead to harm. This mixed-method study evaluates the effects of screen size on clinical users’ perceptions of medical application usability and safety when interfacing to critical patient information. In this research, two mobile devices are examined: iPhone® and the iPad®. METHOD: Eleven physicians and one nurse practitioner participated in a chart-review simulation using an app that was an end-point to an electronic health record. Screen-recording, video-recording and a think-aloud protocol were used to gather data during the simulation. Additionally, participants completed Likert-based questionnaires and engaged in semi-structured interviews. RESULTS: A total of 105 usability, usefulness and safety problems were recorded and analysed. A strong preference was found for the larger screen when reviewing patient data due to the large quantity of data and the increased display size. The smaller device was preferred due to the devices portability when participants needed to remain informed when they were away from the point of care. CONCLUSION: There is an association between screen size and the perceived safety of the handheld device. The iPad was perceived to be safer to use in clinical practice. Participants preferred the iPad® because of the larger size, not because they thought it was safer or easier to use. The iPhone® was preferred for its portability and its usefulness was perceived to increase with greater distance from the point of care.
Graduate