Current Generation Of Smartphones Research Articles

Voting on a Smartphone: Evaluating the Usability of an Optimized Voting System for Handheld Mobile Devices

The goal of this research was to assess the usability of a voting system designed for current-generation smartphones. Smartphones offer remote participation in elections through the use of pervasive technology and voting on these devices could, among other benefits, increase voter participation while allowing voters to use familiar technology. We developed a mobile voting system for the iPhone and compared its usability with traditional voting platforms. Results showed that the mobile voting system was not as efficient as the other voting methods in total interaction time. However, smartphone owners committed fewer errors on the mobile voting system than on the traditional voting systems. These results, along with others, are discussed along with several important design considerations for voting technology.

A Smartphone Client-Server Teleradiology System for Primary Diagnosis of Acute Stroke

BackgroundRecent advances in the treatment of acute ischemic stroke have made rapid acquisition, visualization, and interpretation of images a key factor for positive patient outcomes. We have developed a new teleradiology system based on a client-server architecture that enables rapid access to interactive advanced 2-D and 3-D visualization on a current generation smartphone device (Apple iPhone or iPod Touch, or an Android phone) without requiring patient image data to be stored on the device. Instead, a server loads and renders the patient images, then transmits a rendered frame to the remote device.ObjectiveOur objective was to determine if a new smartphone client-server teleradiology system is capable of providing accuracies and interpretation times sufficient for diagnosis of acute stroke. MethodsThis was a retrospective study. We obtained 120 recent consecutive noncontrast computed tomography (NCCT) brain scans and 70 computed tomography angiogram (CTA) head scans from the Calgary Stroke Program database. Scans were read by two neuroradiologists, one on a medical diagnostic workstation and an iPod or iPhone (hereafter referred to as an iOS device) and the other only on an iOS device. NCCT brain scans were evaluated for early signs of infarction, which includes early parenchymal ischemic changes and dense vessel sign, and to exclude acute intraparenchymal hemorrhage and stroke mimics. CTA brain scans were evaluated for any intracranial vessel occlusion. The interpretations made on an iOS device were compared with those made at a workstation. The total interpretation times were recorded for both platforms. Interrater agreement was assessed. True positives, true negatives, false positives, and false negatives were obtained, and sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of detecting the abnormalities on the iOS device were computed. ResultsThe sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of detecting intraparenchymal hemorrhage were 100% using the iOS device with a perfect interrater agreement (kappa = 1). The sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of detecting acute parenchymal ischemic change were 94.1%, 100%, and 98.09% respectively for reader 1 and 97.05%, 100%, and 99.04% for reader 2 with nearly perfect interrater agreement (kappa = .8). The sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of detecting dense vessel sign were 100%, 95.4%, and 96.19% respectively for reader 1 and 72.2%, 100%, and 95.23% for reader 2 using the iOS device with a good interrater agreement (kappa = .69). The sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of detecting vessel occlusion on CT angiography scans were 94.4%, 100%, and 98.46% respectively for both readers using the iOS device, with perfect interrater agreement (kappa = 1). No significant difference (P < .05) was noted in the interpretation time between the workstation and iOS device.ConclusionThe smartphone client-server teleradiology system appears promising and may have the potential to allow urgent management decisions in acute stroke. However, this study was retrospective, involved relatively few patient studies, and only two readers. Generalizing conclusions about its clinical utility, especially in other diagnostic use cases, should not be made until additional studies are performed.

Migrating Android Applications to the Cloud

Recently, smartphone technologies have evolved quickly and offered end users the computing power and networking capabilities required to perform useful network and multimedia applications. However, due to limited physical sizes and battery capacities, the current generation of smartphones cannot yet fulfill the requirements of sophisticated applications of which personal computers are capable. One way to solve this problem is to minimize the workload on a smartphone as much as possible by offloading portions of an application to a server. The solution is particularly attractive today as cloud computing provides the needed server resources at relatively low costs. This paper proposes a novel, lightweight application migration mechanism for the users of smartphones to suspend the execution of applications and offload them to the cloud. The authors also developed a framework to perform Android applications efficiently with virtual phones in the cloud with a virtual storage. This paper discusses the migration mechanism and evaluates its effectiveness on the Android smartphone. This approach may effectively offload workload for Android applications even with low-speed mobile network.

Exploration of Attacks on Current Generation Smartphones

Due to the ever increasing capabilities of current generation smartphones, they are quickly becoming more attractive targets for malicious attackers. The potential of porting attacks and malware from modern computers to these mobile devices is becoming a reality. In this paper, we explore the possibility of staging some attacks on the 802.11 network interface which is common to all smartphones. We begin by explaining and carrying out the exploitation of the SSH vulnerability on jailbroken iPhones that was discovered in late 2009. This paper then looks at simple network flooding attacks with the intention of causing a simple denial of service by depleting the battery life of the device. It is also our intention to show that these flooding attacks can be carried out utilizing a smartphone as the aggressor in order to attack other mobile devices and that the procedure for such attacks is not difficult. A simple tool is developed in order to carry out these attacks and to show that even though these attacks are relatively simple, they can have profound effects.

Investigating a smartphone imaging unit for photoplethysmography

Current-generation smartphones boast a video unit comprising a camera next to a white light emitting diode and this configuration would be suitable for reflection-mode bio-optical sensing and imaging applications. We demonstrate reflection photoplethysmographic (PPG) imaging using this technology on the index finger of a male volunteer during rest and immediately after performing a short run. The returned signals carry useful PPG signals and were used, for example, to compute change in heart rate. Our results are encouraging, especially in the area of personal and home-based care applications.