Mobile Phone Programming-Based on Mobile Sensor API for User Interface

Abstract

Recently, it is a popular trend to incorporate sensors into personal consumer devices. This action provides more interaction with users and optimizes users’ experiences. For instance, the remote controller of Wii employs an accelerometer that enables players to simulate motions in real life. The ipod touch can automatically change the screen to display vertically or horizontally according to the placement of the device. Also, various kinds of sensors are embedded in mobile devices to provide more services and functions. The usual types of mobile sensors include the accelerometer, ambient light sensor, magnetometer and rotation sensor. Besides, the mobile phone company Nokia has opened the access to the hardware to some extent and provided API for developers to access them conveniently. In this way, the users are able to not only enjoy the sensor-related services provided by the phone manufacturers, but also to run those sensor-based applications developed by individual developers. In this final thesis, I programmed a sensor-controlled user interface by implementing the accelerometer inside the mobile device. The application is based on Java 2 ME platform and Java SDK emulator. A three-axis accelerometer and the mobile sensor API (JSR 256) are necessarily required for the mobile device to run the application. This user interface provides a means to switch the menu by the movement of the device, compared with the traditional approach of pressing a button.