I believe that in near future smart phones will play a very important role in conducting empirical research such as marketing , all types of survey research, participatory healthcare, educational technology, medicine, ...

By 2015, there will be an estimated two billion smart phone users worldwide. This technology presents exciting opportunities for cognitive science as a medium for rapid, large-scale experimentation and data collection.

Smartphones in particular offer many different kinds of,  applications and fulfill further technical requirements. This is the basis to allow conducting empirical research studies. 

Conducting surveys via mobile phones could possibly help to counteract against the generally declining motivation of respondents, as many potential participants enjoy using this technical device. 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3510747/

http://www.biomedical-engineering-online.com/content/10/1/24

Dear Dr. Nageswara Rao Posinasetti . It is a very good question. Certainly use of mobile phones in research is quite justified as it is spread all over the world. I asked a similar question few months ago (see attached link) but did not get enough feedback so far.

Here I introduce you to a paper published recently in Wiley's International Journal of Food Science & Technology:

Zafar Iqbal and Robert B. Bjorklund. Assessment of a mobile phone for use as a spectroscopic analytical tool for foods and beverages, International Journal of Food Science & Technology, Volume 46, Issue 11, pages 2428–2436, November 2011.

One of my PhD students currently doing his thesis in this area. The title of his PhD thesis is: Design and implementation of an online intelligent system for prognosis

and diagnosis of potato plant macro nutrient (NPK) deficiencies through image processing by Android phones.

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Does_anyone_have_experience_with_using_Androids_mobile_for_food_quality_inspection_Matlabs_IP_toolbox?_tpcectx=profile_questions

I believe that in near future smart phones will play a very important role in conducting empirical research such as marketing , all types of survey research, participatory healthcare, educational technology, medicine, ...

By 2015, there will be an estimated two billion smart phone users worldwide. This technology presents exciting opportunities for cognitive science as a medium for rapid, large-scale experimentation and data collection.

Smartphones in particular offer many different kinds of,  applications and fulfill further technical requirements. This is the basis to allow conducting empirical research studies. 

Conducting surveys via mobile phones could possibly help to counteract against the generally declining motivation of respondents, as many potential participants enjoy using this technical device. 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3510747/

http://www.biomedical-engineering-online.com/content/10/1/24

Dear Nageswara,

It is a brilliant idea . Smartphones have a lot of applications and I wish it can be applied very soon.  

Dear Nageswara,

Everything seems OK. with the framework, ethics of the research, data collected in attached link by you. I only want to add, that from my own experieces,  using IPhone while data collection as  overt interview can be complicated because of personal requests of our informants. During my researches 2007-2009, I had an informer a man in early adulthood with mild intellectual disability and schizophrenia, who asked me of not recording data on the iPhone. I accidentally discovered that he preferrs and feel comfortable when he sees recording process on the notebook - as flickering diodes in voice recording software. So in some cases as overt interview, using iPhones may by not preferred by participants of the research,  They prefer other media.

Dear @Nageswara, the use of mobile phones in research will lead to a boom  in research which helps solving many issues in many fields.

It is a ANY TIME RESEARCH, as mobile phones are inseparable from us. Enough signal strength to download can really facilitate the research as an ongoing  effort. I would personally welcome this, but this may bring in other problems that to the excuses (works / commitments) away from system would contribute.

Can bring in added strain to the eyes (which i get glued to a long day work with the system) as this is very small screen and more focus.

Under a methodological perspective using smartphones for research has a lot of advantages. One main advantages is the higer ecological validity (if we talk about smartphone users). Cobiming this kind of empirical (survey) data with GPS coordinates or physiological measures or environmental measures - all measured by the smartphone - is in my opinion one the main future trends in qualitative and quantitative empirical research.

Smartphones are commonly used in telemedicine (mainly to gather and transmit patients health record), but there is a lot of useful software to upgrade this function to almost full research analysis. Moreover there is a lot of novel solutions such as Google Glass to provide extended data gathering (localization, external inputs including vision, etc.), which also may be developed using Ambient Intelligence, Augmented Reality, and/or Affective Computing. This way possibilities of research are huge.

Dear Prof, use of smartphone apps in research may be an innovative and cost effective method in new trend research. We need a good software developer who can fulfill the needs...

The best use of Smartphone is to use it as a Microscope. It can solve many problems regarding to medical facilities in developing countries. till now most of the works regarding Smartphone as a microscope is done by Ozcan Group, UCLA. read the following attached article from LAB ON A CHIP...

How do you ensure that the game conditions i.e the experimental conditions are uniform?

The usefulnes is undoubtful, but I think at least for emergency problems. Smartphone is an additional instrument, but at the moment it is not the main one.

I feel the same problems like @Ananth. And a additional concern could be, are your data discrete or abused and manipulated. Just remember the recent FB debacle.

Nowadays applications on Smartphones are increasing exponentially. Another interesting application is about iris recognition using such mobiles.

Dear @Nageswara, very good and very actual thread as well as paper You have attached! Of course, I like the most an answer of my dear @Valentina! It is very good application area!Here is an example of IRIS RECOGNITION!

Furthermore, Zeidman as an author again, here at RG portal!

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~jgd1000/csvt.pdf

https://www.researchgate.net/search.Search.html?type=publication&query=The%20Utility%20of%20Smartphones&previous=question&tabViewId=53e22e72d11b8b39468b458f

Sorry, this is the second day as I am aware of problems of editing my answers. So, the second link about the paper of Zeideman, here at RG portal, is available by following this link!

Article Crowdsourcing for Cognitive Science - The Utility of Smartphones

Thank you dear Ljubomir for the references. In fact smart phones have been used for scientific applications for quite some time. Here is a good compilation of eight scientific applications from Scientific American.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/8-apps-that-turn-citizens-into-scientists/

Thank you dear Valentina. As you rightly said there are many smartphone applications for science. Here are a few examples of apps for field biologists such as data entry, field guides and field work help.

http://brunalab.org/apps/

The use of smart phones is a rational idea due to mobility and portability of smart phones. The phones are already being utilized in various fields such as agriculture, disaster management and community mobilization etc. The phones can also be used in monitoring attendance of teachers in schools/colleges/universities.

Dear Nageswara, we are publishing a paper about pollution and noise monitoring systems using smart phones. Crowd sourcing and social networking do help in gathering data for the research. Contact me if you need more details.

@Michel

I am glad to hear about your research and would be very happy to read when it is published. May be you can give the details here. Crowd sourcing for the research and data collection through a smartphone is a great idea and people will be very happy to know and apply it to their research programs. This would be particularly useful for developing countries where the resources for research are not all that readily available.

Thank you Iftak Hussain for your response. A partial quote from the abstract of the paper you cited.

"transforming the mobile phone into a cost-effective and yet extremely powerful platform to run, e.g., biomedical tests,"

Here are a few more references that are also using the lab on a chip concept.

Oncescu, V., Mancuso, M., & Erickson, D. (2014). Cholesterol testing on a smartphone. Lab on a Chip, 14(4), 759-763.

Stedtfeld, R. D., Tourlousse, D. M., Seyrig, G., Stedtfeld, T. M., Kronlein, M., Price, S., ... & Hashsham, S. A. (2012). Gene-Z: a device for point of care genetic testing using a smartphone. Lab on a Chip, 12(8), 1454-1462.

http://nano.mae.cornell.edu/pubs/oncescu_loac_2014.pdf

Dear @Nageswara

As I said already we are doing a PhD thesis entitled: "Design and implementation of an online intelligent system for prognosis and diagnosis of potato plant macro nutrient (NPK) deficiencies through image processing by Android phones"

It is a very exciting and new research area.  Here I give some of our literature review on recent (last two years) engineering applications  of mobile/smart phones for those interested to collaborate with us or do similar research in this area (mainly in Agriculture and Biosystems):

Confalonieri, R., M. Foi, R. Casa, S. Aquaro, E. Tona, M. Peterle, A. Boldini, G. De Carli, A. Ferrari, G. Finotto, T. Guarneri, V. Manzoni, E. Movedi, A. Nisoli, L. Paleari, I. Radici, M. Suardi, D. Veronesi, S. Bregaglio, G. Cappelli, M. E. Chiodini, P. Dominoni, C. Francone, N. Frasso, T. Stella, and M. Acutis. 2013. Development of an app for estimating leaf area index using a smartphone. Trueness and precision determination and comparison with other indirect methods. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 96:67-74.

Delgado, J. A., K. Kowalski, and C. Tebbe. 2013. The first Nitrogen Index app for mobile devices: Using portable technology for smart agricultural management. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 123:91-121

Dhumal, Y., R and J. Chitode, S. 2013. Greenhouse Automation using Zigbee and Smart Phone. International Journal of Advanced  Research in Computer Science and Software Engineering 3(5):7.

Gong, A., J. Yu, Y. He, and Z. Qiu. 2013. Citrus yield estimation based on images processed by an Android mobile phone. Biosystems Engineering 115(2):162-170.

Intaravanne, Y., S. Sumriddetchkajorn, and J. Nukeaw. 2012. Cell phone-based two-dimensional spectral analysis for banana ripeness estimation. Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical 168:390-394.

Weng, Y.-H., F.-S. Sun, and J. D. Grigsby. 2012.  GeoTools:  An android phone application in geology. Computers & Geosciences 44:24-30.

Iqbal, Z. and R. B. Bjorklund. 2011. Assessment of a mobile phone for use as a spectroscopic analytical tool for foods and beverages. International Journal of Food Science & Technology 46(11):2428-2436.

Mednieks;, Z., L. Dornin;, G. B. Meike;, and M. Nakamura. 2012. Programming Android-Java Programming for the New Generation of Mobile Devices. O’Reilly Media, CA.

For collective wisdom contribution - quick messaging back and forth between participants and moderators, using SMS texting, instant messaging, or email. Such exchanges can take the form of Q & A dialogues, more free-flowing conversations, notes, diary/journal entries, attachments, or moderator instructions, probes, reminders, and affirmations... Jay Zaltzman and Betsy Leichliter, "Mobile Qualitative Research".... attached

http://www.newqualitative.org/qualitative-research/mobile-qualitative-research/

Dear @Mahmoud, this link about 13 New Mobile Agriculture Apps For 2013 might help!

http://www.croplife.com/editorial/matt-hopkins/13-new-mobile-agriculture-apps-for-2013/

There are some very good applications of smart phones in agriculture, based on Android OS. These research papers are given bellow! It might serve as a literature for the Ph.D research that @Mahmoud have mentioned!

Article REST Web Services improve the efficiency of data transfer of...

Article Krishi Ville — Android based solution for Indian agriculture

Here are a few more recent agriculture and Farm apps reviews.The second one gives details of the approach used in developing the app - An Android Application for Farmers to Disseminate Horticulture Information.

http://farmindustrynews.com/precision-farming/top-agricultural-apps-2013

http://research.ijcaonline.org/volume88/number4/pxc3893671.pdf

Dear @Ljubomir  and @Nageswara, Thank you a thousands for introducing these very good links on applications of Android  based mobile phones in agriculture.  Really appreciated. 

I unreservedly endorse them as I see no negative but positive effect son the resaerch!

Period!

Yes, the use of mobile smart phones will play a good role in research as well as communicating the latest things/ develoments through out the world.

The Smart phones utility into RESEARCH can still more find large footing when RESEARCHER SPECIFIC APPS are developed such as that

Thanks to all regarding utilities of smart mobile phone, I also need to adapt these.

Thanks to all regarding utilities of smart mobile phone, I also need to adapt these.

Mobile phones have evolved to be smart computers (smartphones) supporting a wide range of information services that can be accessed anytime and from almost anywhere. With the increasing number of users and greater incursion into people’s life, smartphones have the potential to significantly influence the research experience. Use of smartphones can address a wide variety of information needs; in particular, the instant information support of smartphones enables researchers to more effectively solve problems, share experiences, and “store” memories. 

I think it is really helpful for many of us. scientific calculator and accurate sensors for vital signals seems to be a significant step for scientific research in all fields. it will make research affordable even for little budgets for the case of some health researches.

The smart is everything this days, as internet browser is no longer a problem. with internet, then research is easily conducted.

Answer sent by my colleague Prof Mohammed Fahmy through a message:

The smart phone is like any other research tool is an advanced way to collect data. The main concern,however is how to authenticate the collected data??

There are so many sites on the Internet today that are full of false or fake data!!!

If we can find a sure way of authenticate the data collected over the smart phones ،it becomes an awesome tool➡️➡️➡️😀😀