An advertising ID is a unique user identifier (ID) assigned to a mobile device (smart phone, tablet computer), or operating environment, to help advertising services personalize their offers. [1] It can be sent to advertisers and other third parties which can use this unique ID to track the user's movements, habits, and usages of applications. [2] There is a potential for such technology to replace magic cookies. [3]
A voice-user interface (VUI) enables spoken human interaction with computers, using speech recognition to understand spoken commands and answer questions, and typically text to speech to play a reply. A voice command device is a device controlled with a voice user interface.
Mobile app development is the act or process by which a mobile app is developed for one or more mobile devices, which can include personal digital assistants (PDA), enterprise digital assistants (EDA), or mobile phones. Such software applications are specifically designed to run on mobile devices, taking numerous hardware constraints into consideration. Common constraints include CPU architecture and speeds, available memory (RAM), limited data storage capacities, and considerable variation in displays and input methods. These applications can be pre-installed on phones during manufacturing or delivered as web applications, using server-side or client-side processing to provide an "application-like" experience within a web browser.
Google Pay Send, previously known as Google Wallet, was a peer-to-peer payments service developed by Google before its merger into Google Pay. It allowed people to send and receive money from a mobile device or desktop computer.
Bing for mobile is a search tool for handheld mobile devices from Microsoft as part of their Bing search engine. It is designed for mobile device displays. Bing Mobile is built into Windows Mobile and Windows Phone as proprietary software, accessed via the Search key on Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8 devices. It is also available on Windows Phone 8.1, and can be downloaded for other platforms, including Android.
Android is a mobile operating system based on a modified version of the Linux kernel and other open-source software, designed primarily for touchscreen-based mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Android has historically been developed by a consortium of developers known as the Open Handset Alliance, but its most widely used version is primarily developed by Google. First released in 2008, Android is the world's most widely used operating system; the latest version, released on October 15, 2024, is Android 15.
A mobile operating system is an operating system used for smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, smartglasses, or other non-laptop personal mobile computing devices. While computers such as typical/mobile laptops are "mobile", the operating systems used on them are usually not considered mobile, as they were originally designed for desktop computers that historically did not have or need specific mobile features. This "fine line" distinguishing mobile and other forms has become blurred in recent years, due to the fact that newer devices have become smaller and more mobile, unlike the hardware of the past. Key notabilities blurring this line are the introduction of tablet computers, light laptops, and the hybridization of the two in 2-in-1 PCs.
UC Browser is a web browser developed by mobile internet company UCWeb, a subsidiary of the Alibaba Group. It was the most popular mobile browser in India, Indonesia, and Mali, as well as the second-most popular one in China as of 2017. Its world-wide browser share as of May 2022 is 0.86% overall according to StatCounter.
HP ePrint was a term used by Hewlett-Packard to describe a variety of printing technologies developed for mobile computing devices, such as smartphones, tablet computers, and laptops.
An app store, also called an app marketplace or app catalog, is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not include the running of the computer itself. Complex software designed for use on a personal computer, for example, may have a related app designed for use on a mobile device. Today apps are normally designed to run on a specific operating system—such as the contemporary iOS, macOS, Windows, Linux or Android—but in the past mobile carriers had their own portals for apps and related media content.
A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on desktop computers, and web applications which run in mobile web browsers rather than directly on the mobile device.
A lock screen is a computer user interface element used by various operating systems. They regulate immediate access to a device by requiring the user to perform a certain action in order to receive access, such as entering a password, using a certain button combination, or performing a certain gesture using a device's touchscreen. There are various authentication methods to get past the lock screen, with the most popular and common ones being personal identification numbers (PINs), the Android pattern lock, and biometrics.
iBeacon is a protocol developed by Apple and introduced at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in 2013. Various vendors have since made iBeacon-compatible hardware transmitters – typically called beacons – a class of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices that broadcast their identifier to nearby portable electronic devices. The technology enables smartphones, tablets and other devices to perform actions when in proximity to an iBeacon.
Cortana was a virtual assistant developed by Microsoft that used the Bing search engine to perform tasks such as setting reminders and answering questions for users.
A progressive web application (PWA), or progressive web app, is a type of web app that can be installed on a device as a standalone application. PWAs are installed using the offline cache of the device's web browser.
Bluetooth beacons are hardware transmitters — a class of Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) devices that broadcast their identifier to nearby portable electronic devices. The technology enables smartphones, tablets and other devices to perform actions when in close proximity to a beacon.
Firefox Focus is a free and open-source privacy-focused mobile browser by Mozilla, based on Firefox. It is available for Android and iOS smartphones and tablets. Its predecessor, Focus by Firefox, was released in December 2015 as a tracker-blocking application which worked only in conjunction with the Safari mobile browser on iOS. It was developed into a minimalist web browser in 2016 but retained this background blocking functionality. The Android version of the browser was first released in June 2017 and was downloaded over one million times in the first month. As of January 2017, it was available in 27 languages. The version released for German-speaking countries has telemetry disabled and is named Firefox Klar to avoid ambiguity with the German news magazine FOCUS.
iOS 14 is the fourteenth major release of the iOS mobile operating system developed by Apple for the iPhone and iPod touch lines. Announced at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference on June 22, 2020 as the successor to iOS 13, it was released to the public on September 16, 2020. It was succeeded by iOS 15 on September 20, 2021.
The (Google/Apple) Exposure Notification System (GAEN) is a framework and protocol specification developed by Apple Inc. and Google to facilitate digital contact tracing during the COVID-19 pandemic. When used by health authorities, it augments more traditional contact tracing techniques by automatically logging close approaches among notification system users using Android or iOS smartphones. Exposure Notification is a decentralized reporting protocol built on a combination of Bluetooth Low Energy technology and privacy-preserving cryptography. It is an opt-in feature within COVID-19 apps developed and published by authorized health authorities. Unveiled on April 10, 2020, it was made available on iOS on May 20, 2020 as part of the iOS 13.5 update and on December 14, 2020 as part of the iOS 12.5 update for older iPhones. On Android, it was added to devices via a Google Play Services update, supporting all versions since Android Marshmallow.
Apple's Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) is a unique random device identifier Apple generates and assigns to every device. It is intended to be used by advertisers to deliver personalized ads and attribute ad interactions for ad retargeting. Users can opt-out of IDFA via the "Limit Ad Tracking" (LAT) setting.