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11.3.4 Politics and Government
Mobile phones have also become a tool for several political and e-government
issues. In several UK cities, it is possible to select political leaders through SMS
election, and mobile phones have also become a new tool for election propaganda,
such as in the presidential election in the Philippines in 2004, when candidate
Arroyo's consultant sent SMSs to the constituencies to influence their voting.
Text messages via mobile phones are also a common, quick, and effective way to
organize political protests, like the Spanish general elections in 2004, or the over-
throw of President Joseph Estrada of Philippines.
11.4 Anatomy of a Mobile Phone
Mobile phones are electronic devices designed to work on cellular networks and
containing a set of services that allow phones of different types to communicate
with each other. Mobile phones need a subscription to a carrier (mobile phone
operator). Typically, mobile phones work on GSM networks, and the operator
issues a SIM card for each client, which contains the subscription and authentica-
tion parameters. Mobile phones are meant to support voice calls, but they can also
send and receive data, send text messages (SMS), and access WAP services or
Internet using technologies such as GPRS or 3G.
Each day, mobile phones are more often used for data communications. A typical
data communication from/to a mobile phone is a SMS, which have been so success-
ful as a mobile phone service that they have had an impact on our cultures, allowing
the creation of pseudolanguages used by users to communicate among them using as
few characters as possible. Most cell phones that support data communications can
be used as wireless modems (tethering) to connect computers to the Internet every-
where, which enables people from rural areas to access the Internet.
Most mobile handsets produced after 2008 incorporate a set of hardware char-
acteristics [
39
] that make them a complex electronics piece of electronics (see
Fig.
11.1
) and also a useful tool for several tasks.
11.4.1 Hardware Anatomy
In the last few years, telephone hardware has been improved in several ways.
Nowadays, the market place offers different models with high capabilities similar
to those of 4-year-old computers. The main issues for the manufacturers are still
battery life and connectivity, all of them compressed in limited dimensions. Almost
98% of smart phone manufacturers are using the ARM hardware platform due to the
low-consumption battery. This choice is causing several difficulties in the software
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