the strategy then depends on the purpose of the designed
mobile application. Both strategies are suitable for remote
laboratories. After we developed a Web based mobile
application for remote laboratories [2] we have also designed a
native application described in this paper that has extended the
possibilities of the previous one. For instance thanks to the
native application measured data from the remote experiment
can be stored locally and processed later offline.
At this time there are several popular mobile operating
systems on the market for which the native applications can be
developed. Just to mention the most important ones, there are
Android, iOS, Windows Phone, BlackBerry. The well-known
older ones were Symbian and Windows Mobile. Let’s briefly
characterize some of the most important ones. As concerning
the market share Android is now dominant (more than 80% by
the end of 2014). It is the open-source operating system based
on Linux that is developed by Google for the use in
smartphones and tablets with a touch screen. Most of the
applications are written in the Java programming language.
The second one in market share is the Apple’s iOS. In
comparison with Android the iOS is a proprietary product
developed by Apple exclusively for its own devices (iPhone,
iPod, iPad). Applications for iOS are written in the Objective C
language. Windows Phone 8.1 is successor of Windows
Mobile operating system and it also replaced Symbian after the
acquisition of Nokia by Microsoft. The market share of
Windows Phone is less than 3% when the next proprietary
BlackBerry mobile operating system has less than 1%.
The presented mobile application is based on Android
operating system that is very popular among young students.
Android software development kit (SDK) offers a powerful
tool for the development of flexible mobile applications. This
belongs to the advantages of the chosen technology. On the
other hand such a client application is not suitable for the use
with mobile devices that do not support the Android system.
A.