Android, a platform for smartphones and mobile devices, is becoming more and more present in the market. Nevertheless, the battery runtime of smartphones is short and strongly influenced by the network usage. Some proposals exist to reduce the energy consumption associated to the network usage and increase the smartphone runtime. But for adjusting them for a real improvement it is required to study the network utilisation triggered by the smartphone applications. With this analysis the applications communication patterns can be obtained and used to predict the network usage and the amount of data expected. In order to gather network statistics of the running applications, a logger application is implemented for the Android platform to log network statistics of running applications. The statistics are analysed on a PC computer to obtain the applications' communication patterns. A number of applications are selected, sorted by the rankings of downloads and type. A detailed analysis of the network usage is presented. This analysis identifies some of their patterns, some application characteristics and groups of applications from the determined network usage. The network usages for applications with similar functionalities are compared and lessons learnt from the analysis are discussed. Finally, some improvements for our logger application and analysis are discussed.

Intelligent devices such as smart phones, smart watches, virtual reality (VR) headsets and personal exercise devices have become integral elements of accessories used by many people. The ability of these devices to verify or identify the user could be applied for enhanced security and user experience customization among other things. Almost all these devices have built-in inertial sensors such as accelerometer and gyroscope. These inertial sensors respond to the movements made by the user while performing day to day activities like walking, getting up and sitting down. The response depends on the activity being performed and thus can be used for activity recognition. The response also captures the user's unique way of doing the activity and can be used as a behavioral biometric for verification or identification. The acceleration (accelerometer) and rate of rotation (gyroscope) are recorded in the device coordinate frame. But to determine the user's motion, these need to be converted to a coordinate frame relative to the user. In most situations the orientation of the device relative to the user can neither be controlled nor determined reliably. The solution to this problem requires methods to remove the dependence on device orientation while comparing the signals collected at different times. In a vast of majority of research to date, the performance of authentication algorithms using inertial sensors have been evaluated on small datasets with few tens of subjects, collected under controlled placement of the sensors. Very often stand alone inertial sensors have been used to collect the data. Stand alone sensors afford better calibration, while the sensors built into smart devices offer little or no means of calibration. Due to these limitations of the datasets used, it is difficult to extend the results from these research to realistic performance with a large number subjects and natural placement of off-the-shelf smart devices. This dissertation describes the Kabsch algorithm which is used to achieve orientation invariance of the recorded inertial data, enabling better authentication independent of device orientation. It also presents the Vector Cross Product (VCP) method developed to achieve orientation invariance. Details of a realistic inertial dataset (USF-PDA dataset) collected with commercial smart phones placed in natural positions and orientations using 101 subjects are given. The data includes sessions from different days on a subset of 56 subjects. This would enable realistic evaluation of authentication algorithms. This dataset has been made publicly available. The performance of five methods that address the orientation dependence of signals are compared to a baseline that performs no compensation for orientation of the device. The methods as a part of a overall gait authentication algorithm are evaluated on the USF-PDA dataset mentioned above and another large dataset with more than 400 subjects. The results show that the orientation compensation methods are able to improve the authentication performance on data with uncontrolled orientation to be close to performance on data collected with controlled orientation. The Kabsch method shows the highest improvement.

Advertising through smart phone applications is one of the fastest growing categories in advertising nowadays. Branded game-apps on mobile phones have several very innovative and attractive aspects, they physically engage their customers into a game, creating on a first level an entertainment but mainly they are advertising their products and the brand’s name. Many studies have been written on gaming, customer engagement and marketing strategies, but only few studies has been written on the convergence of mobile phone technology, gaming and marketing. This research is investigating to which extend this innovative way of marketing can be considered as an efficient marketing strategy. In order to get an insight from both sides of the market, semi-structured interviews have been lead with phone-app experts and users. Similar answers were formulated by both the producers and the users, leading me to the conclusion that a game-app is engaging the users into an overall positive dialogue with the brand. The contribution of this exploratory study is a greater understanding of the phenomenon of branded game-apps, in relation to previous studies on marketing, game mechanisms and brand-consumer relationships.

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With the smart handheld devices and the rapid development of network applications, data exchange between devices as the first problem. There are many ways the information can be transmitted from one end to the other end, but which one is the best way? This paper examines several common data package method, compare their features, advantages and disadvantages, and to test the effectiveness of the data package, the size of data packaged, the package needed time. In order to prove the practicality of packages, designed a "file synchronization system," using Protocol Buffer as data exchange formats, implementing the Android system.

Compared with the advertisement on traditional media, mobile applications are totally different in usage situation, operating interfaces and communication modes with consumers. The study analyzes the influence of the positions (such as, pre-game advertisement and peripheral game advertisement) and formats (such as, dynamic banners advertisement and rich media advertisement) of advertisement on advertising effects. In addition, flow level is the modifying variable. The study collected a total of 220 effective samples by using judgmental sampling procedures to send out questionnaires over the Internet. Respondents must have experiences in playing Angry Bird on a smart phone The research results include: (1) The positions of advertisement influence significantly over the advertisement attitudes, brand and product memories; (2) The formats of advertisement influence significantly over the advertisement attitudes, and (3) The positions and formats of advertisement influence significantly over the advertisement attitudes when respondents are in low flow level. On the contrary, the positions and formats of advertisement influence significantly over brand and product memories when respondents are in high flow level.

Since smart homes will be more and more popular in the future, the needs of finding a friendly, comfortable and smart interface between users and home environments are growing. However, conventional interfaces have reached their limits. So, this paper describes a new concept of interface in a home environment. This work is distinguished by building a separable smart robot. A smart phone is used as a brain, and a robot car is used as a body. With the system, people will be allowed to carry the robot's brain when they are out of their home. In this case, the brain can not only be a normal smart phone, but also can monitor parameters such as the temperature at home. On the other hand, when people are at home, they will be allowed to put their phones on the robot car. By invoking the system, they will have an assist-robot. This assist-robot will act as a new interface in the smart home by following people and recognizing their voice commands in order to take notes, to read notes and to control smart home devices. This thesis also implements face recognition to improve the communication between users and the interface. Test results show that our proposed system is well accepted.

With the development of modern technology, mobile communications are changing people’s life and making their day to day life activities easier. The aim of this thesis work is to address one of the modern technology solution that simplifies and act as an HMI solution between a pump drive and a operator based on smart phones.   Xylem provides a wide range of pump control units, serving several advanced features includes condition monitoring, cleaning sequence, flow calculation, energy optimizer, sump cleaning and so on. Smart run is a pump control unit, whose parameters installed at wastewater pump stations are possible to monitor and configure physically using keypad or remotely using extension communication  gateway, which is a costly solution for installations and maintenance. So, a simple working prototype HMI solution based on smart phones is interested to see how smart phone can relay information between a pump control and an operator in the vicinity of the pump.    For this approach a thorough study has been done on different types of smart phones, their trends and different possible wireless communication solutions between  operator’s smart phone  and the pump. An interactive design process with a focus on usability and data representation  on a smart phone application was developed to support their needs and provide a cost effective solution. The result showed that this approach has many benefits includes serving as cost effective HMI solution, data monitoring, better alarm monitoring with additional information, enhanced display over Smart Run’s OLED displays, multilingual support, provides easier support services and also useful as a receiver unit for dewatering pumps hardware developed in parallel with this thesis. This thesis work is carried out in Xylem Water Solutions AB[1], Stockholm, Sweden in collaboration with Mittuniversitetet[2], Sundsvall, Department of Electronics Design.  This report can be used as groundwork for future development of smart phone applications for Xylem products [1]  http://www.xyleminc.com [2]  http://www.miun.se

abstract: The purpose of this study was to gather qualitative data on different and novel methods used to self-monitor diet and exercise during a weight loss study. Participants who used either a traditional paper and pencil method or a smart phone weight loss app for diet and exercise tracking were recruited for focus groups. Focus group discussions centered on the liked and disliked aspects of recording, perceived behavior changes, and suggestions for improved self-monitoring. Focus groups were organized based on the method of self-monitoring. The app group tracked calorie intake and expenditure via the "Lose It" app on their smart phones. The paper & pencil group recorded exercise and food intake in a journal and self-regulated diet based on recommended servings from each food group (or exchange lists). Focus group sessions were audio-recorded, transcribed and coded by the researcher and an independent coder. Results indicated that app participants liked the convenience, affordability, and user-friendly features, but wanted more nutrition advice. App participants liked self-managing their diet, not restricting certain foods or food groups and allowing for indulgences by balancing calories and exercise. Also, they desired an accurate estimation of energy expenditure from an app, based on individual characteristics (i.e., gender and age). Participants who recorded on paper liked the size for a visual layout of food entries, but desired a technology-enhanced method with an auto-calculation of calorie intake and expenditure. They also suggested increased accountability and opportunities for social support would enhance self-monitoring. Overall, an ideal technology-assisted self-monitoring app or program would be free and include an auto-calculation of calorie intake, a gender- and age- specific estimation of calories expended, easy entry of foods from a large database, the ability to enter whole recipes, nutrition information and recommendations, and be available via phone, tablet or computer (based on personal preference). / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Nutrition 2012

Since smart homes will be more and more popular in the future, the needs of finding a friendly, comfortable and smart interface between users and home environments are growing. However, conventional interfaces have reached their limits. So, this paper describes a new concept of interface in a home environment. This work is distinguished by building a separable smart robot. A smart phone is used as a brain, and a robot car is used as a body. With the system, people will be allowed to carry the robot's brain when they are out of their home. In this case, the brain can not only be a normal smart phone, but also can monitor parameters such as the temperature at home. On the other hand, when people are at home, they will be allowed to put their phones on the robot car. By invoking the system, they will have an assist-robot. This assist-robot will act as a new interface in the smart home by following people and recognizing their voice commands in order to take notes, to read notes and to control smart home devices. This thesis also implements face recognition to improve the communication between users and the interface. Test results show that our proposed system is well accepted.