MOBILE PHONES

A mobile phone is an electronic device used mainly for voice communication. The other use to which mobile phone have extended to support includes SMS for text messaging, e-mail, packet switching for internet connections, video for gaming and other services, Bluetooth connection between paired devices, camera services for photography and video recording, mms for sending and receiving pictures and videos, mp3 player, radio, GPS, read bar codes, interface with virtual reality glasses and even television services. Thus phones have evolved in term of function to be a device that is an irresistible companion or assistant renamed smartphones.

These smart phones whether they are made by different manufacturers, have a standard features for both it hardware and software.

The basic smartphone hardware consist of the following parts; a circuit board, contain the processor which is the brain of the phone, an antenna, a liquid crystal display(LCD) screen, a keyboard, a microphone, a speaker and a battery. This list is by no mean exhaustive or final in some phones there are provision to include array of card such as additional memory card for improved functions and services.

The circuit board or motherboard as it is sometimes called is the heart of the system and contains several chips and slots for card modules. The analog to digital and the digital to analog conversion chips translate the outgoing audio signal from analog to digital and the incoming signal from digital back to analog. The digital signal processor (DSP) is a highly customized processor designed to perform signal manipulation calculations at high speed. The microprocessor handles all the function for the keyboard and display, deals with command and control signaling with the base station and also coordinates the rest of the functions on the board. The read only memory (ROM) and the flash memory chips provide storage for the phones operating system and customizable features, such as phone directory. The radio frequency (RF) and power section handles power management and recharging and also deals with the hundreds of FM channels. Finally, the RF amplifier handles signal travelling to and from the antenna.

The software that drives the phone or makes it to function as desired is called the operating system. An operating system on a smartphone works exactly the same way it does on computers. A mobile operating system is a program that acts as an interface between the system hardware, other application software and the user. The function of a mobile phone operating system is as follows;

The mobile phone operating system, manages the main or primary memory, in doing so, it allocates and deallocates memory resources, keeps records of memory usage as well as distribute memory resources while multiprocessing.

The mobile phone operating system is also used for processor management and scheduling. This is necessary because when more than one process runs on the system, the operating system decides how and when a process will use the CPU.

The mobile phone operating system is also used to manage processes on the numerous devices on the phone. This may involve allocation and deallocation of the devices to different processes, keeping records of the devices and deciding which processes can use which devices as well as time duration of such process activity.

The mobile phone operating system is also employed for file management on the phone. This may require that files on the system are stored in different directories on the operating system. In so doing, it keeps records of the status and locations of the files as well as allocates and deallocates file resources.

The mobile phone operating system is paramount to the security of the phone, it keeps the system and programs safe and secure through authentication. Hence as user ID and password is often necessary to determine the authenticity of the user.

The other functions of the mobile phone operating system are in error detection, keeping records of system performance and communication between different application software installed on phone.

The main mobile phone operating system in use today are ; android os, bada os, blackberry os ,apple os , windows mobile os , Symbian os, harmony os, palm os , web os among a growing list of operating system. Whereas operating systems are a handful, application software are too numerous to mention.

The function of application software also called end user program consist of program designed to make users more productive and to assist with a personal task. Examples of application software are; presentation, spreadsheet, database, multimedia, simulation and word processing software.

There is no gain in saying that mobile phones will remain with us for a long time, but the form it will take or evolve to is left to everyone’s imagination.