Wireless Speed

Posted by Unknown Selasa, 24 April 2012 0 komentar
How many wireless devices do you use in one day? From your cellphone to laptop to wireless to Bluetooth headset, you depend on these devices to work reliably, but do you know their limitations? Depending on the device's radio, the maximum range could be a few feet to several miles. In the wireless world, we define this maximum range, not as the point at which the device stops sending or receiving, but the distance at which the radio receives data at 25% its typical amount. For all of the standards listed below, range is considered direct line of sight without physical obstructions. Mountains, trees, and buildings greatly degrade the range, which present challenges for cell phone service providers.

Service providers have many options for providing wireless signal. For instance, Verizon and Sprint use the CDMA and LTE standards. AT&T, T-Mobile, and most international service providers use the GSM standards. Regarding peak download and upload speeds, both CDMA and GSM are well matched. For a cell phone to connect to both CDMA and GSM, two radios are required, since the standards are not compatible with one another. Within a standard, the rule of thumb is that newer revisions are backwards compatible with older revision. Other faster, short range standards, like Wi-Fi are shown to give a basis for comparison.


(Source Data Collected from FCC documents)

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Code Snippet - Android App That Displays Data Usage

Posted by Unknown 0 komentar
This is the first in the series of code snippet blog posts!

I'm going to be trying to follow a standard format for all the code snippet blog posts but that may change over time.

Packages Used:


  • android.app.Activity - The activity class is one of the main classes in Android development. An activity represents a single screen with a user interface. 
  • android.app.ActivityManager - Activity Managers interact with the activities in the app.
  • android.app.ActivityManager.RunningAppProcessInfo - Used to retrieve information about a running app.
  • android.net.TrafficStats - Used to retrieve network traffic statistics.
  • android.os.Bundle - Maps String values to Parcelable types.
  • android.os.Process - Contains tools to manage Android OS processes.

Class - AndroidDataOffenders:


The naming for this class is pretty hilarious since all the app does is display how much data each app is using. Therefore, the "Data Offenders" consists of all the apps running on the device. Overall, the app retrieves the phone's traffic statistics and then outputs every app's data usage.

Function - onCreate:


The onCreate function is called when the app is first created (i.e. when it's first ran). 

The function first calls super on onCreate - it's pretty much a standard to perform this function for non-complex apps.

The function then creates an instance of TrafficStats to use it for retrieving the traffic statistics of the phone.

The next two lines seem a bit pointless to me... getMobileRxBytes() retrieves the total amount of bytes received while getTotalRxBytes() retrieves the total amount of bytes sent. The reason why I think it's pointless is that these numbers are never stored in any variable or used in the future. As far as I know, these don't have a dual purpose as initialization functions.


The two lines after simple retrieves the user ID for the device and creates an instance of ActivityManager used to retrieve the running apps later on.


After that, everything is ready to find the data usage. For every running process, it retrieves it's RunningAppProcessInfo. Every process info has a processName as well as a UID. The processName is displayed and the UID of the process is used to get the total bytes used for that particular UID.


After everything is displayed, the app sets the view to the main view for the app which just says "Hello".


Conclusion

In conclusion, this app shows how simple it is to retrieve data usage in the Android system. Diving in to this piece of code allowed me to gain more insight on developing an app that deals with data usage on Android devices.

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Posted by Unknown Jumat, 20 April 2012 0 komentar

My Verizon Mobile


If Verizon Wireless is your mobile service provider you are in luck, Verizon provides non smart phones and smart phones the ability to view their data usage. This application has over 90,000 reviews with an average of 3.7/5.  This application contains the most accurate data because its directly from the provider.


Not only can this application tell you your data usage, but it has the ability to show everything about your account such as the minutes used and messages sent as well. Because this is a Verizon application and not a third party application it has the ability to retrieve your mobile plan so there is no guess work. You know exactly the details of your account.

I personally have Verizon and have experience with this application. This application has a lot of options and no customization to show desired information so its not exactly easy to access. Furthermore the information is not saved onto the phone so there is a waiting period between when you launch the application and when the information is retrieved. This means that the reception of  a location can influence whether you will be able to view the desired information.

Overall this is a good application, It gets some getting use to, but the information it provides very accurate and the main usage screen is designed well so you can see how many minutes, messages, or data out of your total.

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How much screen on time can I get? A test.

Posted by Unknown 0 komentar
Doing nothing else. Just a static Google browser screen.

At 70% screen brightness
15 minutes equals a ~7% drop = ~28%/hr or less than 4hrs of screen time available.

At 30% screen brightness
15 minutes equals a ~5% drop = ~20%/hr or approx. 5hrs of screen time available.

At 10% screen brightness
15 minutes equals a ~4% drop = ~16%/hr or just over 6hrs of screen time available



Obviously all these numbers are relative to my other usage and are really just estimates as battery meters are far from precise (your phone is really guessing). Plus, they don't do decimals so I don't know if the drop was from 31.9% to 25.0% or 31.0% to 25.9% - hence my approximations.

But its still good to know and helps answer the questions "What's killing my battery?" and "Is this normal?"



-DnT

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The End of Unlimited

Posted by Unknown Kamis, 19 April 2012 0 komentar
We couldn't say that we didn't see this coming. On July 7 of last year, Verizon's new data plans all transitioned to metered plans giving customers 2 options: pay per megabyte or select a tiered plan. Tiered plans come in a few flavors: 2GB for $30 a month, $50 for 5GB, and $80 for 10GB. Considering that Verizon's unlimited data used to cost the same as the lowest plan, this comes as a major disappointment to Verizon's customer base. To the average consumer, these numbers do not mean much. How much is 2 gigabytes of data? Is that an hour or video? A hundred emails? You would be hard-pressed to get a consistent answer from the typical smartphone user. Cell phone service providers are more than happy to leave you in the dark and charge overages.

Source: PikeResearch

When smartphones were less common, service providers were more than eager to give customers unlimited data. At that time, data plans were considered a premium, add-on service. The additional data plan revenue was a bonus to current voice and text rates. As smartphones worked their way into the hands of 42% of Americans, service providers started to see dollar signs. Charging consumers for what they actually use is not a new concept. After all, that is exactly what service providers do for text and voice. It was only a matter of time before providers turned on the meter. Now that Verizon has joined the list of cell phone service providers no longer offering unlimited data, the final few will likely follow.

Who are these few companies you ask? First, if you signed a Verizon data plan contract before July, hold onto it like gold. You will continue to receive unlimited data on your current plan. There is no official word on when Verizon will pull the plug on these remaining unlimited data customers. If you are looking for an alternative to Verizon, Sprint still offers a comparative unlimited plan with some catches. The first catch: "unlimited" only pertains to usage on Sprints cell phone towers. When Sprint towers are not available, data is metered or unavailable. The second catch: Sprint service coverage is typically not as good as Verizon's. If trends continue, Sprint will most follow Verizon is revoking unlimited data.

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Android Application Review - Onavo

Posted by Unknown Selasa, 17 April 2012 0 komentar

Evaluation Plan
System Identification
Name: Onavo
Purpose: Monitor's mobile data usage on an Android phone and gives suggestions to the user based on the data it gathers.
Target Users:Android mobile device users with a limited data plan since unlimited data plan users would most likely not care about how much data they use.



Tasks andActivities
  • Check the data plan advice for the daily data plan advice.
  • Check out which app is using the most data every week.
  • Check the detailed use of the most data-using app and restrict it to only use Wi-Fi.
  • Set the Data Plan cap to 2GB.
  • Check the data usage by time for monthly usage.


Metrics
  • Visualization of data usage: Scale 0 – 10, 10 being excellent visualization
  • Advice for data plan: “Poor,” “Mediocre,” “OK,” “Good,” or “Great” advice
  • Usage of graphs: Scale 0 – 10, 10 being excellent display and usage of graphs
  • Effectiveness of graphs: Scale 0 – 10, 10 being excellent at displaying information on graphs


JakobNielson's Heuristic Evaluation
Visibility of System Status
  • If there is a long wait in the navigation between the screens, there is a loading popup that informs the user that it's taking time to load.
  • When the app first started, it had to pull data from the carrier and load it so it had no data at all to display. Instead of displaying nothing, it displayed a “Loading...” text where the amount of data used should have been.
  • The Widget has a great real-time update of data usage.
  • The notification bar includes an icon of the app to show the user that the app is currently running and monitoring data usage.

Match Between System and the Real World
  • All the labels and buttons are in plain text and I can understand what each thing does. I didn't have to read instructions on how to use the app so there is a good connection between the system and the real world.

User Control and Freedom
  • Since this is an Android system, there is a designated “Back” button on the phone itself. If a user accidentally goes to the wrong displaying of data usage, the user can simply hit the “Back” button and return to the previous screen.
  • The user doesn't really edit anything on the app besides some information to be displayed. If they make a mistake on what they want displayed, they have to go back in to the settings to change it back. But this is pretty much the case for all apps out in the market.

Consistency and Standards
  • The functionality of the app's buttons stay consistent throughout the entire app and there was no point during my evaluation that I wondered what each button does. The naming convention is persistent throughout the app.

Error Prevention
  • There most likely is a good error prevention design since it deals with pulling data usage from the carrier. The error prevention is probably done all in the background since I didn't run in to any mechanisms within the app that prevents an error.
  • The Widget for the app can be resized to be too small to display any data usage information.

Recognition Rather Than Recall
  • There really was no recalling of information when evaluating the app. The purpose of this app was to display and calculate data for the user so the user doesn't have to keep track of it themselves. This app does a really good job at monitoring all data usage and reporting it back to the user.

Flexibility and Efficiency of Use
  • This app definitely caters to both experienced and inexperienced users. It is very easy to use and extremely easy to learn. There really is no flexibility aspect of this app since it's so simple and effective.

Aesthetic and Minimalist Design
  • Although there is a lot of information displayed for data usage, it is all relevant and can be helpful to the user in one way or another. The only problem I see here would be the clutter of information on one screen. The alternative would be to make more screens to display different categories of information. However, this approach would add more complexity to the app so it's more of a trade-off.

Help Users Recognize, Diagnose, and Recover from Errors
  • I didn't make any triggers considered errors by the app so I couldn't evaluate this section.
  • I would imagine a force close dialog would pop up for a forced close, but that is an Android system dialog not related to the app.

Help and Documentation
  • On the first usage on every screen, there is a pop up message. The message explains what information is displayed on each screen and how to use the screen to change what is displayed.
  • Some pop up messages also tell the user what the app will do with the data once it gathers more information in the future.


Conclusion
Assessment
Overall, this app is very good quality and conveys a lot of useful information to the user. The visibility of the system status is excellent and portrays a lot of information to the user. There is a very clear match between the system and the world so that the user understands all the information the app is trying to convey. The user has a lot of control over the navigation of the app and freedom of information displayed. The labels and buttons are consistent throughout the app and the user doesn’t get confused as to what means what. I am pretty sure the error prevention is done in the background so I say their error prevention is good since I haven’t ran in to any errors. This app is really flexible, easy to use and caters to new users very well. The aesthetic and minimalist design is perfect since it displays a lot of information but not too much information that is not needed by the user. I have not seen any error messages. The help and documentation is excellent, especially for new users. If I had a limited data plan instead of unlimited, I would definitely use this app to monitor my data usage.

Insights Gained
Using Nielson's Ten Usability heuristics definitely gave me a good insight on how to develop for the usability of the users. I find this list very helpful and will refer to it in the future when I'm designing a user interface. I also find that the heuristics are broad in the sense that the developer can choose whatever method they want to so that items in the list are satisfied. I am planning on using this for my future internship since it's heavily user-based and involves a lot of human interaction. I was interested in user interface development before and these usability heuristics increased my interests in developing quality user interfaces.

I also gained insight on what users with a limited data plan actually look for. This would really help our project decisions to design the app so the user’s needs are met. I believe that all our reviews of other systems combined can help us decide what to do.

Recommendations toImprove System
I don’t really have any recommendations the system because it displays everything I want it to display. A minor improvement would be to use a color spectrum to display the graphs so that the user knows how “intense” each bar is.

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iOS Application Review: Data Usage Monitor

Posted by Unknown 0 komentar



Tasks
  • ·       Set the usage limit
  • ·       Test the Mobile Data Page
  • ·       Test the WiFi Data Page
  • ·       Adjust the data on each of the pages
  • ·       Set the notification to on


Data used for the evaluation:
Rate for 1-10

Person 1
Person 2
Person 3
How well did it show the information?
Rate 10 if the data was presented how you wanted it
6
5
7
How useful was the information provided?
Rate 10 if the information provided everything you wanted to know
10
8
10
How intuitive was the interface?
 Rate 10 if it was all very easily understood
8
8
9
How well did you like the interface?
Rate 10 if you loved the interface
8
7
9
If you had to rate its notification of reaching the limit, how well do you think it performed this job?
6
5
7

Evaluation Form:
How useful was the information provided by the application regarding WiFi usage and what did you like/dislike?
Person 1: I liked it, the presentation was nice and the gauge, graph, lists, and all the info was awesome. But I don’t think that I would use this for Wifi.
            Person 2: I thought it was a lot of good information but slightly cluttered.
            Person 3: I thought it was great. I liked the gauge especially.
How useful was the information provided by the application regarding Mobile Data usage and what did you like/dislike?
Person 1: I liked it, the presentation was nice and the gauge, graph, lists, and all the info was awesome. Especially useful for mobile data.
            Person 2: I thought it was a lot of good information but slightly cluttered
            Person 3: I thought it was great. I liked the gauge especially.
Was the List of Graph method more useful?  Why?
Person 1: I found the list method more useful because I could search through the data used by day and also look at it location based.
            Person 2: I liked the graph, I just wanted to see whether I was cutting back on my usage or not.
            Person 3: They were both okay.
Would you rather have had it display the info more in the background? What are some ways that you feel might have worked better for notification?
            Person 1: I would have liked it to be in the top bar, or maybe a pull-down notification?
            Person 2: It was inconvenient to have to open the application to see my data usage.
Person 3: I thought it displayed the data usage fairly well. I don’t always need to know how much I’m using.
Is there anything that confused you? If so, how did the documentation help?
            Person 1: It was pretty straightforward.
            Person 2: I didn’t need the documentation.
            Person 3:I looked at it, it seemed confusing.


Evaluation of the data:
               
From the data, it was clear to see that one thing that this application lacked was non-intrusive notifications. However, in the ways it presented the data, it excelled. It seemed that for the more in depth view of the data usage, the gauge, graph, and listing features were eye-catching and useful. One person noted that the information on the remaining, days left in billing cycle, and projected usage were particularly useful features for planning out data usage. Although the WiFi page was not needed, it was also interesting to get another view on other data usage outside of mobile data. Overall, the interface and design was well made and seemed to be easily usable with clear paths to useful settings.

One downside to this application is that it does not have a background use. In order to receive the notifications and check the data usage, the user needs to open the application.

Discussion of the practical aspects of the experiment (e.g., environmental factors such as noise; modifications of the tasks or procedures used; time required):

In this case, some of the tasks could have been more clearly defined. Also, a couple of the questions on the evaluation form could have been better worded. I could take out one of the questions regarding the usefulness of information and replaced it with a comparison of which they thought was more important and that they would use.
It seemed like the basics of the application were easy to pick up and understand and the time required to set it up and understand the elements of the application for all testers was less than 5 minutes.

Assessment:

I believe that both the usability of the application and presentation of data was both great. However, I believe that a couple things could have been improved.  I liked that some of the settings were editable based on the pages that were selected.  One possible bug is that the realtime monitor kept turning off and every time the application was opened, it would ask if it wanted to be turned on again.

Recommendations:

I recommend that this application provided notification throughout all programs or through a non-intrusive method such as on the menu bar. Another area that the application could have improved in was allow for people to search through the help screen.  Since it was long and scrollable, it might have been useful to create links to the separate questions or provide some framework for jumping to one area. Other than that, it proved to excel in almost all other categories and provided a lot of useful information that satisfied users.

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