The document describes the development of a mobile scientific calculator application. It will allow students to solve mathematical problems and view the step-by-step solutions on their mobile phones. The application will be created using Java programming on the NetBeans platform to ensure it can run on mobile devices. An iterative development process will be used to analyze requirements, design interfaces, code functions, test the application, and repeat the process to continuously improve the software. The goal is to provide students with an affordable alternative to physical scientific calculators that displays solutions to help learning.

1. MOBILE
SCIENTIFIC
CALCULATOR
WITH SOLUTION
Annalene D. Arevalo
Julia Bernadette G. Edellon

2. INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I

3. With the continuous advancements
in wireless technology and the
widespread use of mobile devices
such as pocket PCs, personal digital
assistants (PDAs), mobile phones,
many innovative mobile applications
are emerging, aiming to enhance
wireless communication and
providing users with ubiquitous
access to information anytime and
anywhere (Li and Liao, 2000).

4. Mobile applications have been
developed specifically for
entertainment, current events
and also education. There has
been a high demand and fast
growth of these applications
which attracted extensive
research interests.

5. In the field of education,
mobile applications are used
for collaborative learning or
information access (Luchini
et al., 2002)

6. A scientific calculator is a
must-have device for
college students so as to
comply with the
requirements necessary for
their math subjects.

7. Hence, this is a great
opportunity for the researchers
to conduct the study on
developing a mobile scientific
calculator with solution that will
benefit the students or anyone
who is using such mobile
phones.

8. STATEMENTS OF THE
PROBLEM
CHAPTER I

9.  According to the survey conducted by the
researchers in Cavite State University Imus Campus,
50% of the students are finding Mathematics as the
least understandable subject. This leads to the
question: How will the students be able to solve
mathematical problems at ease?

11.  Ascollege students, they were obliged to have
a scientific calculator for math-related
subjects. There are instances that some
students cannot afford to buy one due to
expensiveness. This leads to the question: How
can the students have an alternative in the
absence of a scientific calculator?

12.  Engineers, finance managers, statisticians,
architects and other related jobs are engaged in
activities that involves computations as part of their
profession. This leads to question: How will these
people be able to perform their jobs well in their
specialization?

13. IMPORTANCE OF THE
STUDY
CHAPTER I

14. The study will play an important role to the
users in such a way that they do not need
to have a scientific calculator in hand
which is expensive in order for them to solve
difficult math equations. At the same time,
the users also get a correct solution for
each equation solved. In that case, they
learn how the answer is solved through the
proposed scientific calculator.

15. This study will enhance and widen the
knowledge of the researchers in such a way
that they will be able to learn on how to make
an application on mobile phones. It will serve
as a beginning towards developing some
other useful applications that can be stored
on phones. In addition, this also serves as an
advantage over other students taking up BS
Information Technology because creating a
mobile application is not covered by the
curriculum of the course offered in the said
academe.

16. With the development of this software, the
future researchers may use this as a guide on
creating a mobile application. This will help
them bring out new ideas to do such and
make them realize that there are still a lot of
useful software besides the proposed
application. This study can be also
recommended to the future researchers if
they want to make enhancements and
maintain the proposed mobile application.

17. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
CHAPTER I

18. General Objective
The study is primarily aimed to develop a
mobile scientific calculator with a display of
solution. This application will help the
students to have an accurate calculation
and inform the students of how does the
solution became the answer.

19. Specific Objectives
 acquire the complete requirements
necessary for the development of the mobile
scientific calculator;
 design a user-friendly scientific calculator that
is suitable for the data and materials
gathered;
 implement the integrated designs and codes
for the mobile scientific calculator; and
 evaluate the proposed application
appropriate for the users’ needs.

20. SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS
OF THE STUDY
CHAPTER I

21. The study is mainly focused on providing a
scientific calculator to be used on mobile
phones. The mobile phone should be running in
a Symbian operating system or any other
mobile operating system that is java-capable.
Lower-end phones that are incapable of
installing jar files are not considered to use the
proposed software. In addition, NetBeans 6.9
and J2ME programming language will be the
main scripting language to be used on
creating the proposed application.

22. Evaluation or assessment module is included
in the front end of the application because it
will display results for the operation processed
by the proposed software. The scientific
calculator is able to answer mathematical
equations in which it also displays a solution
for the inputted equation. This is very helpful
because the user will learn and will be aware
about the step-by-step procedure on how the
equation is solved and answered.

23. The mobile scientific calculator includes the
basic operations such as addition,
subtraction, division, and multiplication. It
can evaluate positive and negative integers
as well as decimals, fractions, pi’s, and
radicals. Sine, cosine, tangent, cosecant,
secant, and cotangent are also included. It
is also able to perform permutations and
logarithms. The application follows the
PEMDAS rule as a guide in its computation. It
can only display the answer up to 10 digits
only, or if greater it will be converted into a
scientific notation.

24. The application provides two text areas. The
first one is where the user is able to input
numbers and/or symbols. The latter is where
the breakdown of the operations performed
is displayed. This text area is not editable
and is dependent on the equation’s
solution.

25. REVIEW OF RELATED
LITERATURE
CHAPTER II

26.  Symbian Operating System
According to Morris (2007), Symbian OS certainly
aims at unequaled robustness, making strong
guarantees about the integrity and safety
(security) of user data and the ability of the
system to run without failure (to be crash-proof, in
other words). From the beginning, it has also
aimed to be easy and intuitive to use and fully
driven by a graphical user interface (GUI). (The
original conception included a full set of
integrated applications and an attractive,
intuitive and usable GUI; 'charming the user' is an
early Symbian OS slogan.)

27.  NetBeans IDE
NetBeans IDE is the main tool to be used in building
the mobile scientific calculator with the
integration of java codes. NetBeans IDE is a free-
of-charge integrated development environment
(IDE) primarily focused on making it easier to
develop Java applications. It provides support for
all types of Java applications, from rich desktop
clients to multitier enterprise applications to
applications for Java-enabled handheld devices.

28.  Java Platform
Java's syntax may resemble C++, but it has no
similarity to C++ as a language. Java's chief
semantics are dynamically-bound and use single
inheritance, class objects, and an extensive
runtime system. C++ and Modula-3 are as far
away from this model as any object-oriented
language can be. Java is clearly semantically
derivative of Smalltalk and other languages
related to it. Most notably, NeXT's Objective-C is
almost uncannily similar to Java: single
inheritance, dynamic binding, dynamic loading,
class objects, interfaces, and now methods
stored as data (a-la Java's reflection library), all-
virtual functions (Naughton, 2004).

29.  Java Platform, Micro Edition (J2ME)
In the book entitled Beginning J2ME: From Novice
to Professional, Third Edition by Li et al. (2005),
J2ME is not a specific piece of software or
specification. All it means is Java for small
devices. Small devices range in size from
pagers, mobile phones, and personal digital
assistants (PDAs) all the way up to things like set-
top boxes that are just shy of being desktop
PCs.

30.  Context Diagram
Kossiakoff (2004) illustrated that context diagram is
useful to develop a first-cut context diagram. This
separates what the project team will design or
redesign, and what is beyond its scope. It
provides the baseline for more complicated SD
model and use case models. The context
diagram establishes data flow diagram (DFD)
notation and uses circles that define the future
system to design/redesign. Also, it uses arrows to
indicate flow of data to and from the system
from external actors.

31.  Data Flow Diagram
The intention of a DFD, as explained by Bruza
(2003), is to describe an aspect of the
information system at a particular abstraction
level. A useful feature of DFD's is that a process
can be further refined by another DFD. This DFD
is a more detailed description of the process at a
lower level of abstraction. DFD's are a useful
description mechanism for modeling process
architecture, but they do not allow sufficient
information to give a clear interpretation of what
is being described.

32.  Fishbone Diagram
“The fishbone diagram is a tool for identifying many
possible causes for an effect or problem and sorts
ideas into useful categories. The effect being
examined is normally some troublesome aspect of
product or service quality, such as a machined part
not to specification, delivery times varying too
widely, excessive number of bugs in software under
development, and so on, but the effect may also
relate to internal processes such as high rate of
team failures (Tague, The Quality Toolbox, 2004).”

33. REVIEW OF RELATED
STUDIES
CHAPTER II

34.  XCALC: A Computerized Driven Calculator
It is a computerized driven calculator that
provides a transfer of learning from computing
using keypads into voice input. The XCALC helps
the user to reduce errors for mathematical and
scientific calculations. It was also able to
increase user productivity that will allow them to
do different things simultaneously.

35.  Development of a Mobile Phone-Based
Cookbook
It is a mobile application that was designed to
enhance the use of an ordinary cookbook. It
helps the users to enhance their cooking skills. It
consists of different types of dishes in other
countries like Italian, Japanese and American.
It lessens the time and effort of the user in
browsing cookbooks over the internet.

36.  Development of Multi-Language Mobile
Phone Based Translation System with
Dictionary
This mobile phone-based application was
designed to translates five different languages
with a dictionary and also has its preview
voice feature. It is a user-friendly and an
accessible translation system.

37.  Development of a Mobile Phone
Interactive Computer Encyclopedia
It was design as a unique Mobile Phone
Interactive Computer Encyclopedia.
It helps the student to search desired
topics about the hardware and
software of the computers.

38.  Mobiminder: Location Based Reminder on
Mobiles
Mobiminder allows user to set reminders
based on location. Reminders or alerts in
existing system allows user to do some task
at a particular time. It keeps an ongoing
list of things to buy or certain reminders
the user needs in daily living.

39.
XCALC DMPBC TSWD MPICE MLBRM MSCWS
Year 2007 2011 2011 2011 2010 2012
Methodolo Iterative
gy
SDLC Spiral Model RAD Model V-Model V-Model
Model
User-
Friendly
     
Showing of 
Solution
Computati  
on
Mobility     
Well-
Functioned
     

40. MATERIALS
CHAPTER III

42. In developing the mobile scientific calculator, the
researchers need to have knowledge on Java
and NetBeans programming. These are essential
tools because these are the most appropriate in
creating a mobile application. The researchers will
be working on an Intel Pentium Dual CPU E2180
desktop computer which runs in a Windows 7
Ultimate SP1 32-bit operating system. The
application will be created using NetBeans 6.9
and J2ME in order for it to be running on a mobile
device. Furthermore, the researchers will be
guided by the iterative system design all
throughout the development of the mobile
scientific calculator.

43. When installing the finished
application, the mobile device
must be running on a Symbian 40
or Symbian 60 operating system,
or if Android, the mobile device
must have a java emulator (i.e.
jbed, j2runner) in order for it to
run the application.

44. METHODS
CHAPTER III

45. Iterative Life Cycle Model
Development begins by specifying and implementing just part of the software, which
can then be reviewed in order to identify further requirements. This process is then
repeated, producing a new version of the software for each cycle of the model.

46. The researchers will
start with a very
small version of the
program wherein
this does not do
anything besides
displaying basic
interface of the
program. The
researchers will use
NetBeans with
integration of JDK
to begin the
coding per se.

47. The Analysis
Phase wherein
figuring out the
data and
materials
necessary for
the
development
takes place.

48. The Design Phase
wherein the
software solution is
provided to meet
the requirements
gathered in the
first phase. The
researchers need
to design an
improved
interface of the
program.

49. Coding Phase is
then observed
to which some
of the activities
done in the
previous phases
are compiled
and some
additional
scripts are
made.

50. Testing Phase is
wherein evaluation
of the application
takes place. The
researchers use a
java emulator to test
if the application is
running according
to its function. If this
does not, the
researchers have to
debug and either
the design or coding
phase should be
changed.

51. The programmers have to make a settlement as
to whether the application produced by the
application will be rejected, or kept as a starting
point for the next cycle. Eventually, a point will be
reached where the requirements are complete
and the software can be delivered or released, or
it becomes impossible to enhance
the application as required, and a fresh start has
to be made. As the software evolves through
successive cycles, tests have to be repeated and
extended to verify each version of the software.

52. Context Diagram

53. Data Flow Diagram

55. THAT’S ALL
FOLKS! 