Device Fragmentation: A Case Study using “NeSen”
Remote and eHealthcare Systems are designed to provide healthcare solutions catering to wide variety of requirements ranging from highly personalized to domain-specific systems. Often, a smartphone is used as an aid to port data from embedded or external sensors to remote repository. A majority of smartphones are equipped with multiple network interfaces including provisions for dual subscriber identity modules (SIMs) and a variant of Android as the operating system. Android being an open source system allows customization by the vendor or chipset manufacturer. This raises a serious concern in terms of fragmentation—a form of portability issue with application deployment. For example, App developed on API 16 from MediaTek behaves or crashes over a phone of API 16 from QualComm. We have developed a mobile App called “NeSen” to assess the parameters of all prevalent networks in an area. NeSen uses only the standardized telephony framework and is tried over various smartphones from vendors including Samsung, HTC, LG, iBall, Lava, Micromax, Karbonn, Xiaomi, and Gionee having chipset from MediaTek, QualComm, SpreadTrum, and BroadComm. In this paper, using NeSen, we have conducted first ever evaluation of fragmentation in Android’s basic framework. During experimental trails, several issues concerning device fragmentation are noted.