China
Africa
Explore chapters and articles related to this topic
Introduction to computer architecture
Published in Joseph D. Dumas, Computer Architecture, 2016
Smartphones essentially replaced a pair of separate devices: a cellular telephone (which previously had been used only for voice communication and short text messages) and a personal digital assistant (a small, portable computing device used to keep track of appointments, to-do lists, etc., and, in some cases, access information over the Internet). BlackBerry’s first smartphone was released in 2003. Within three years, use of the device had caught on so widely and addictively that the editorial staff of Webster’s New World Dictionary chose “CrackBerry” as the winner of their Word of the Year contest. Apple’s first iPhone was introduced in 2007, and the following year marked the debut of the HTC Dream—the first smartphone to use the Android mobile operating system. Not only could these devices access the World Wide Web and other Internet sources, act as Global Positioning Service (GPS) trackers, perform voice recognition or other artificial intelligence (AI) functions, and (of course) make telephone calls, their ability to run custom application programs (“apps”) allowed almost limitless extensions to their functionality. Given the proliferation of ever more sophisticated apps, smartphone (and tablet) users demanded ever-greater computing power. With servers and even PCs making the leap to 64-bit processing, it was only a matter of time before they were joined by smaller, mobile devices. The first 64-bit Advanced RISC Machine (ARM) processor—the architecture used in most mobile computing devices—was announced in 2011. In 2013, Apple’s iPhone 5S became the first 64-bit smartphone; the first Android devices to use 64-bit processors debuted the following year.
Computer Technology Primer
Published in Michael M. A. Mirabito, Barbara L. Morgenstern, Mitchell Kapor, The New Communications Technologies, 2004
Michael M. A. Mirabito, Barbara L. Morgenstern, Mitchell Kapor
PDAs can also communicate with a desktop computer for data exchanges, and when properly configured, can be used for e-mail and connecting to high-speed communications networks without the use of a cable (wireless networking). In some cases, PDA functions, and even certain PDAs, have been combined with cellular telephones (cell phones).15 As such, the PDA became a comprehensive information and communications tool—you could use it to process information and for voice/data communication.
Mobile Environmental Sensing Using Smartphones
Published in John G. Webster, Halit Eren, Measurement, Instrumentation, and Sensors Handbook, 2017
Siamak Aram, A. Toriono, F. Rugiano, E. Pasero
These sensors are already embedded (Lane et al. 2010), but there are no sensors for air quality or the pollutants of the environment. These sensors are part of the mobile phones that can apply the internal application programming interfaces (APIs). Some of these embedded sensors are recognized by everybody such as the microphone, the camera, and the GPS module. There are also external sensors that are used besides the embedded sensors; two of them are also used as a prototype in this chapter. Generally, wireless sensor networks use sensors as preplanned sensors or equipped on carriers or vehicles, with immobile routing strategies; alternatively, nowadays, mobile devices that are working as data collectors, especially smartphones, can play a role as distributed movable sensors. Also, as smart devices, they can share information with groups or communities as an important parameter to aid for making decisions for governments, groups of people, and researchers in different communities (Staples 2011). Together, the computing, communication, and sensing, as potencies of the smartphones, make participatory or opportunistic operations possible (Das et al. 2010). For mobility, two types of sensors can be considered; the first type is wearable sensors that people can wear (Choudhury et al. 2008); the second is called phone to web (Mun et al. 2009), where it can also be called phone sensors. Some mobile devices such as PDAs and cell phones can connect to devices and transfer data via Bluetooth. In some projects, they apply storage such as memory cards to store data instead of transferring it online. On the other hand, they send the gathered data to other devices or a central station, either periodically or continuously. The second type applies mobiles to record information from the environment. Mobile phones can record required data and then send it in a short time to a certain station or upload them via the Internet to the web portal (Goldman et al. 2009). Users can gather the environmental information in different situations such as walking, biking, driving, and running; also, the location and tagged (i.e., custom) data can be included. But it is not possible to apply camera, send text messages, or tag more information in these moving situations. Consequently, mobile phones and the web can communicate to aid to improve the quality of lifestyle and to help elders, their family, and doctors in the case of medical monitoring (Goldman et al. 2009).
Artificially Intelligent, Interactive, and Assistive Machines: A Definitional Framework for Intelligent Assistants
Published in International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 2023
Then there were developments in the market which affected how new technology was labelled and presented to the public. The first commercial product which was specifically labelled as “assistant” was made available in 1993 when Apple released a series of mobile hand-held devices called “Personal Digital Assistant” (PDA) under its Newton Project (Honan, 2013). A PDA could organize messages, calendars, alarms, and a user’s handwriting. Patents for PDAs and related applications were also filed by Palm Inc. (see Evers et al., 2001), Nokia (see Siitonen & Ronkka, 1997); and Motorola (Nagel & Seni, 2007), and Hewlett-Packard (Currans & Bertani, 2004). PDAs remained popular in the 1990s and early 2000s and were primarily advertised to help users with the management of their contact lists and messages, etc. Although PDAs were able to help users with basic tasks, they still lacked the ability to communicate with users, i.e., exchange direct verbal messages. Thus, PDAs tapped on to the idea of technology as “assistant” by overpromising its potential in the public domain.