Demystifying Mobile

The world is going mobile and your GIS can to.

It is estimated that there are now more mobiles than humans, consequently GIS users increasingly want to access maps and information from a mobile device. This post is a whistle stop tour of what ArcGIS for Mobile applications are available.  If you want more information please check out the links. 

As the picture below shows the mobile platforms can broadly be grouped into ‘Smartphones and Tablets’ and ‘Rugged Devices’.

Smartphones and Tablets

There has been a proliferation of smartphone and tablet devices (e.g. iPhone, Android and Windows Phone) over the past few years.  There are ArcGIS applications for the following Smartphone and Tablet platforms:

• ArcGIS for iOS
• ArcGIS for Android
• ArcGIS for Windows Phone

For more information, on these free downloadable applications, click here.

Rugged Devices

‘Rugged devices’ refer to mobile hardware designed for high accuracy data capture (e.g. Panasonic Toughbook, Trimble etc.).  This group has traditionally been separate from the consumer mobile space of smartphones and tablets.  The Esri applications that run on rugged devices are:

• ArcPad
• ArcGIS for Windows Mobile

There are heaps of mobile devices on the market and Esri support lots of them with applications.  Consequently device is becoming less of a barrier for adopting GIS.  Also with increased functionality being delivered across these devices through out of the box apps, the barrier of entry is lower than ever before.  

Custom mobile applications

What if the applications don’t have specific functionality you need, or you want to customise the look and feel of them?  There are several options for developing custom mobile applications and these are supported by resources and online communities.

SDKs

Esri provide SDK’s as well as Applications for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Windows Mobile and ArcPad.  The SDK’s allow you to create custom GIS applications native to each platform.  This allows you to develop applications in native code for the device you’re targeting where the functionality and UI can be customised.  In the case of iOS, Android and Windows Phone apps these can be deployed in the respective market place.

Mobile Web

An increasingly popular option in the mobile arena is to host mobile applications in your browser, otherwise known as Mobile Web.  This allows you to develop applications in one code base and deploy it to multiple platforms.  Esri supports mobile web development through its Compact JavaScript API.

Cross Platform

The other developer option available is to write in one code base and deploy as a native application using third party software (e.g.  PhoneGap, Adobe Air and MonoTouch).  An example of this would be an application written using the JavaScript API and deployed to Android, iOS and Windows Phone using PhoneGap.

In summary, there are ArcGIS applications available for a wide range of mobile devices and uses. The capability of these continues to increase, but there are also different options available for ArcGIS mobile development.  

Running Flex apps on iPhone/iPad and Android

The ArcGIS web APIs are a powerful way to create mapping applications using JavaScript, Flex or Silverlight. However, many mobile devices do not support Flex or Silverlight, and JavaScript apps have drawbacks: they don't always behave the same way across different browsers, they do not work well without an active network connection, and they generally have less functionality than Flex or Silverlight apps (simpler UI, inability to access as much hardware, etc).

Of course, mobile technologies evolve rapidly, and it's likely that these criticisms of JavaScript will seem outdated and unfair before very long. Still, we were excited earlier this year when Adobe released Flash Builder 4.5, a development tool that allows cross-platform Flex apps, including GIS apps built with Esri's ArcGIS API for Flex, to be deployed to iOS devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch), Android devices (phones and tablets), and the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

On Android and BlackBerry PlayBook, Flex mobile apps run on AIR, a runtime developed by Adobe. AIR is pre-installed on PlayBook, and can be downloaded for free on Android. Since iOS apps distributed through the Apple App Store are not permitted to execute on third-party runtimes, Flex apps for iOS are normally compiled to native ARM assembly so they can be executed directly on the CPU.

The ArcGIS API for Flex 2.4 includes two mobile Flex samples to help developers get started. Since the API is now capable of recognising multi-touch gestures, Flex is a viable way to develop cross-platform mobile GIS apps. Quite a few of the Flex API code samples originally designed for the web can also be compiled without modification and run on mobile devices. For example, the following screenshot shows the Switching Basemaps web sample running on an iPhone 4. However, although the app may work without modification, sometimes the UI should be redesigned to take into account a smaller screen or lack of a physical keyboard.

AIR can access the GPS, accelerometer, microphone and camera on most mobile devices, although not the gyroscope or compass, so if you need these then you will have to use native code (i.e. Objective-C for iOS, Java for Android). The new AIR 3 runtime has support for Native Extensions, which allows native code modules to be linked with Flex apps.

Free ArcGIS apps written using Flex include MuniTracker, a public transport information app for San Francisco, and ArcGIS Viewer, a lightweight GIS viewer modelled on the ArcGIS Viewer for Flex, although it uses a different codebase because iOS devices do not support apps with a modular architecture like the Flex Viewer. You can download these apps through the App Store/Android Market. Flex apps seem to run quite well on mobile platforms, but runtime performance and battery use need to be considered. For example, MuniTracker disables animated transitions when a user zooms in and out on the map in order to conserve resources, although this behaviour may look a bit odd to users who are accustomed to seeing smooth zoom-level transitions.

More information about designing, building and deploying Flex mobile apps can be found in this guide: Developing Mobile Applications with Adobe Flex and Adobe Flash Builder.

ArcGIS Mobile

Recently one of my colleagues in our team asked me how he could use ArcGIS Mobile on his desktop without  a server licence. This got me looking for information on how this can be done. One of the outcomes of my research was a document that details my findings, as well as how a new user to ArcGIS could go about setting up a Mobile project and start working straight away.

I found that it was quite hard to figure out a way of getting started quickly. At the end of the day, how many people want to spend all their time scratching their heads? Not too many i would imagine. This document gives a very concise description of how to get started.

http://geoxchange.esriuk.com/storage/ArcGIS%20Mobile%20Introduction.pdf

I hope other people find it as useful as i did in putting it together (and my collegue, who is no doubt much happier now!)