UNIVERSITY EXAMINATION 2018/2019

YEAR III SEMESTER I EXAMINATION FOR THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF

SCIENCE IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

BIT 2320 - Mobile Application Development Year III Semester I

Date: Wednesday, 5th December, 2018 Time: 1.30 pm – 3.30 pm

Instructions: Answer question one and Any other two questions

Question One: (30 Marks)

a) Define the term Object intent as used in the BroadcastReceiver class of an
android Mobile Application (2 marks)

b) Explain any four challenges in Mobile Application Development. (2 marks)

c) Outline any two choices available for deploying an android application (2 marks)
d) Android operating system is a stack of software components which
is roughly divided into five sections and four main layers. Using a
well labelled diagram, explain each of the four layers that make up
the android operating system. (8marks)
e) The service base class of an android application defines various call back
methods. Use a skeleton program to demonstrate each of the life cycle
methods of a service base class. (10marks)
g) Android is an open source and Linux-based Operating System for mobile
devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. Explain any six reasons
why it controls at least 82% of the entire mobile application development
sphere. 6 marks)

Question Two: (20 marks)

a) Using an example in each case, indicate the general syntax for

implementing each of the following components of an android

application. (8marks)

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 i) Activity

ii) Service

iii) Broadcast Receiver

iv) Content Provider

b) Explain the functions of the following files and or folders as used

in an android application. (4marks)
i) res/drawable-hdpi

ii) res/layout

iii) res/values

iv) AndroidManifest.xml.

v) Build.gradle

c) An Activity interacts with the user, via a visual UI on a screen. Outline

the two approaches used in constructing a UI. (2marks
d) Whatever component you develop as a part of your android application,
you must declare all its components in a manifest.xml which resides at
the root of the application project directory. Using a simple program,
demonstrate how a default manifest file will look like. (4marks)
e) The "activity_main.xml" layout file of an android app describes a view-tree,
composing of Views and View Groups objects. Using an example in each
case, explain any two attributes of an object. (2marks)

Question Three: (20 marks)

a) The android system initiates its programs with an activity starting with
a call on onCreate().

i) Use a well labelled diagram to demonstrate the life cycle of an

android activity and outline the function of any three call back
methods defined in the activity class. (10marks)

b) Write a program with a single MainActivity class to demonstrate how

each of the above activity life cycle methods are used in an android
application. (10marks)

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 Question Four: (20 marks)

a) Write a program to demonstrate how an android service class

implements any of its four call back methods. (8marks)

b) A service is a component that runs in the background to perform

long-running operations without needing to interact with the user.

i) Briefly describe the two states that a serviced can take. (4marks)

ii) Using well labelled diagrams show the difference in service lifecycles
when created with startService() call back method and when created
with bindService() call back method. (8marks)

Question Five: (20 marks)

a) Outline the four tags used in the manifest file to specify different Android
application components. (4marks)
b) Write an activities_main.xml file that can be used to generate the interface
shown below on a mobile devise. (6marks)

c) An Android Intent is an abstract description of an operation to be performed.

Briefly describe the function of the following components of intent. (6marks)
i) Intent object
ii) Action
iii) Data
d) Write a program with a class MY_Fragment.java to demonstrate how
fragments are used in a mobile application (4marks)

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