Smartphone Communication

This book offers a unique model for understanding the cognitive underpinnings, interactions and discursive effects of our evolving use of smartphones in everyday app-mediated communication, from text messages and GIFs to images, video and social media apps. Adopting a cyberpragmatics framework, grounded in cognitive pragmatics and relevance theory, it gives attention to how both the particular interfaces of different apps and users’ personal attributes influence the contexts and uses of smartphone communication. The communication of emotions – in addition to primarily linguistic content – is foregrounded as an essential element of the kinds of ever-present paralinguistic and phatic communication that characterises our exchange of memes, GIFs, "likes," and image- and video-based content. Insights from related disciplines such as media studies and sociology are incorporated as the author unpacks the timeliest questions of our digitally mediated age. Aimed primarily at scholars and graduate students of communication, linguistics, pragmatics, media studies, and sociology of mass media, Smartphone Communication traffics in topics that will likewise engage upper-level undergraduate students.

This book constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Mobile Communication and Healthcare, MobiHealth 2016, held in Milan, Italy, in November 2016. The 50 revised full papers were reviewed and selected from numerous submissions and are organized in topical sections covering: Technological development for m-health application user engagement.- IoT - Internet of Things.- Advances in soft wearable technology for mobile-health.- Emerging experiences into receiving and delivering healthcare through mobile and embedded solutions.- Advances in personalized healthcare services.- Mobile monitoring, and social media pervasive technologies.

The book is a collection of high-quality research papers presented at Intelligent Communication Technologies and Virtual Mobile Networks (ICICV), held at Francis Xavier Engineering College, Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu, India, during February 10–11, 2022. The book shares knowledge and results in theory, methodology and applications of communication technology and mobile networks. The book covers innovative and cutting-edge work of researchers, developers and practitioners from academia and industry working in the area of computer networks, network protocols and wireless networks, data communication technologies and network security.

Energy consumption and its management have been clearly identified as a challenge in computing and communication system design, where energy economy is obviously of paramount importance for battery powered devices. This thesis addresses the energy efficiency of mobile communication at the user end in the context of cellular networks. We argue that energy efficiency starts by energy awareness and propose EnergyBox, a parametrised tool that enables accurate and repeatable energy quantification at the user end using real data traffic traces as input. EnergyBox offers an abstraction of the underlying states for operation of the wireless interfaces and allows to estimate the energy consumption for different operator settings and device characteristics. The tool is used throughout the thesis to quantify and reveal inefficient data communication patterns of widely used mobile applications. We consider two different perspectives in the search of energy-efficient solutions. From the application perspective, we show that systematically quantifying the energy consumption of design choices (e.g., communication patterns, protocols, and data formats) contributes to a significantly smaller energy footprint. From the system perspective, we devise a cross-layer solution that schedules packet transmissions based on the knowledge of the network parameters that impact the energy consumption of the handset. These attempts show that application level decisions require a better understanding of possible energy apportionment policies at system level. Finally, we study the generic problem of determining the contribution of an entity (e.g., application) to the total energy consumption of a given system (e.g., mobile device). We compare the state-of-the-art policies in terms of fairness leveraging cooperative game theory and analyse their required information and computational complexity. We show that providing incentives to reduce the total energy consumption of the system (as part of fairness) is tightly coupled to the policy selection. Our study provides guidelines to select an appropriate policy depending on the characteristics of the system.

This book constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Mobile Communication and Healthcare, MobiHealth 2021, held in November 2021. Due to Covid-19 pandemic the conference was held virtually.

Smartphone Cultures explores emerging questions about the ways in which this mobile technology and its apps have been produced, represented, regulated and incorporated into everyday social practices. The various authors in this volume each locate their contributions within the circuit of culture model. More specifically, this book engages with issues of production and regulation in the case of the electrical infrastructure supporting smartphones and the development of mobile social gambling apps. It examines issues of consumption through looking at parental practices relating to children’s smartphone use, children’s experience of the regulation of this technology, both in the home and in school, how they cope with the mass of communications via the smartphone and the nature of their attachment to the device. Other chapters cover the engagement of older people with smartphones, as well as how different cultural norms of sociability have a bearing on how the technology is consumed. The smartphone’s implications for other theoretical frameworks is illustrated through examining ramifications for domestication, and the sometimes-limited place of smartphones in certain aspects of life is examined through its role in the practices of reading and writing. Smartphone Cultures presents the latest international research from scholars located in the UK, Europe, the US and Australia and will appeal to scholars and students of media and cultural studies, communication studies and sociologists with interests in technology and social practices.

Smartphone Apps for Health and Wellness helps readers navigate the world of smartphone apps to direct them to those which have had the best medical evidence in obtaining the users’ goal. The book covers the history of apps, how they work, and specific apps to improve health and wellness in order to improve patients outcomes. It discusses several types of apps, including apps for medical care, sleeping, relaxation, nutrition, exercise and weight loss. In addition, sections present the features of a good app to empower readers to make their own decision when evaluating which one to use. This is a valuable resource for clinicians, physicians, researchers and members of biomedical field who are interested in taking advantage of smartphone apps to improve overall health and wellness of patients. Summarizes smartphone apps with the best evidence to improve health and wellness Discusses the most important features of an app to help readers evaluate which app is appropriate for their specific needs Presents the typical results expected when regularly using an app in order to assist healthcare providers in predicting patient outcomes

This book will help readers comprehend technical and policy elements of telecommunication particularly in the context of 5G. It first presents an overview of the current research and standardization practices and lays down the global frequency spectrum allocation process. It further lists solutions to accommodate 5G spectrum requirements. The readers will find a considerable amount of information on 4G (LTE-Advanced), LTE-Advance Pro, 5G NR (New Radio); transport network technologies, 5G NGC (Next Generation Core), OSS (Operations Support Systems), network deployment and end-to-end 5G network architecture. Some details on multiple network elements (end products) such as 5G base station/small cells and the role of semiconductors in telecommunication are also provided. Keeping trends in mind, service delivery mechanisms along with state-of-the-art services such as MFS (mobile financial services), mHealth (mobile health) and IoT (Internet-of-Things) are covered at length. At the end, telecom sector’s burning challenges and best practices are explained which may be looked into for today’s and tomorrow’s networks. The book concludes with certain high level suggestions for the growth of telecommunication, particularly on the importance of basic research, departure from ten-year evolution cycle and having a 20–30 year plan. Explains the conceivable six phases of mobile telecommunication’s ecosystem that includes R&D, standardization, product/network/device & application development, and burning challenges and best practices Provides an overview of research and standardization on 5G Discusses solutions to address 5G spectrum requirements while describing the global frequency spectrum allocation process Presents various case studies and policies Provides details on multiple network elements and the role of semiconductors in telecommunication Presents service delivery mechanisms with special focus on IoT