Feature interaction analysis in mobile phones: on the borderline between application functionalities and platform components

With the recent smartphone boom, plenty of mobile phone platforms have emerged which complement simpler platforms that existed before. At the same time, mobile phones today are capable of things that were hardly imaginable a few years ago. This enables new type of applications. From an application developers view, it is challenging to keep up with the latest developments though. The close relation between application features and platform components that realize that feature, is increasingly hard to track. For instance, the requirement to provide SMS functionality requires at least certain input- and output functionalities, and a wireless transmission technology such as GSM or WCDMA. This work in progress elaborates on this situation and - -once completed - -provides support at studying the consequences of selecting certain application features on the required platform components (hardware and/or software), and vice versa. It helps to understand what application features and platform components are required to realize a certain application. Vice versa, from a bottom up view it can analyze what features will be supported by a certain platform. The position paper proposes to use two-layered feature models to differentiate between application functionality and platform components, and suggests a mapping that enables the analysis of feature interaction (i.e., the interrelation of features on other features or components). Future work will then be able to utilize the models for automated analysis.