Tech Topic Connection

"Tracking progress in mobile phones."

    In this post, we will be taking a deep dive into one of the most essential pieces of smartphones today: the operating system. Within every cellphone you’ve used and even some home phones, there is an underlying operating system that ensures everything is functioning correctly. Operating systems manage all aspects of interaction within the phone. Whenever you are interacting with the phone’s UI to send a text message, take a picture or play a game, the operating system is responsible for ensuring these processes function properly.

    First, we will take a look early operating systems. Following this line of history will lead us into the operating systems that we find in our cellphones today. Early operating systems were text-based and required users to type commands for the system to execute. An example of such a system would be MS DOS. MS Dos was introduced in 1981 by Microsoft as a simple OS for the newly introduced PCs of the time (Vahid, 2017). Soon after, Microsoft developed Windows which was a graphical OS released in the late 80s. Windows was a major innovation that allowed for mainstream adoption of computers because of its easier-to-use graphical interface. Instead of having to remember various commands and functions in order to operate their computers, customers could simply use a mouse to click through and interact with the operating system.

    With the advent of mobile phones and the need to make computers more mobile, both iOS and Android operating systems were released in 2007. iOS is a mobile operating system developed by Apple which runs exclusively on their hardware. Most of the integral parts of iOS are derived from Darwin, which is an open source operating system from Apple (Chandrashekar, 2021). Android is a mobile operating system originally developed for digital cameras but was soon after bought by Google (Chandrashekar, 2021). Open source in nature, many proprietary apps such as Google Chrome and Google Play are pre-installed in devices that run android. Most recently, variants of android have been created for use in smartwatches, TVs and even vehicle entertainment systems. Major components of the Android architecture derive from Linux (Chandrashekar, 2021).

    While operating systems are relied upon for file management, multitasking and interacting with devices, the extent of these capabilities are mostly dictated by the major hardware components that OS runs off of. When multitasking, for example, the limit of how many apps can run at the same with their contents remaining intact is partly limited to the amount RAM the system has. The more RAM, the more apps that can run without their contents being refreshed when jumping between applications. Similarly, the performance of specific apps can be limited to the capabilities of the GPU. Apps most affected by the GPU include games or photo/video editors. 

    Most people carry smartphones nowadays, but don’t consider them to be computers. Smartphones actually are computers, with some high end phones having the capability to compete with powerful traditional desktops. Being that smartphones are true computers, they are created with consideration to network architecture, management and security details. Most smartphones will connect to the internet through data plans provided by cell service providers. “5G” is a major buzzword that is seeing much popularity now, as its latest generation of mobile data technology. Smartphones will use 3G, 4G, and 5G connections to use the internet, although many 3G networks are being shut down now in developed nations. For security, android and iOS have recently been implementing permissions systems that better indicate to the user what information or resources an app might need in order to function properly. Some applications will need to always track user locations, for example, and continue running as a background process (Munim, 2019). In cases like these the app will ask the user for permission to use the phone’s GPS resources. Extra options like “Allow once”, “Allow always”, or “Never allow”, give users more flexibility in choosing how apps use their information. Both Android and iOS will also feature a graphic or a light that indicates to the user that an app may be using resources such as GPS, camera or microphone in the foreground or background 

 (Munim, 2019).  

 

References

Chandrashekar, A., Kumar, P. V., & Chandavarkar, B. R. (2021). Comparative analysis of modern mobile operating systems. 2021 12th International Conference on Computing Communication and Networking Technologies (ICCCNT). https://doi.org/10.1109/icccnt51525.2021.9580093

Munim, K. M., Islam, I., & Islam, M. N. (2019). A conceptual framework for improving privacy in mobile operating systems. 2019 2nd International Conference on Innovation in Engineering and Technology (ICIET), Innovation in Engineering and Technology (ICIET), 2019 2nd International Conference On, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICIET48527.2019.9290741

Qabalin, M. (2021). Credit cards theft using social engineering over whatsapp: a survey study. International arab conference on information technology. pp. 1-7. doi: 10.1109/ACIT53391.2021.9677454.

Vahid, F., & Lysecky, S. (2017). Computing technology for all. https://learn.zybooks.com/zybook/ASHFORDINT100AcademicYear2018/chapter/1/section/1