As mobile computing evolves, new capabilities are constantly introduced to consumers. This is especially true when considering mobile phones. These new capabilities combined with the accelerating rate that devices can acquire, process, and transmit data open the door to an endless possibility of applications. A subset of these applications is to utilize the mobile phone for processing data acquired from a wirelessly paired external sensor. Once the data has been processed, it can be transmitted to a web service where the data is stored and rendered for third party consumption. Building a general application of this nature requires the developer to make a series of important choices.

In this study, the three most popular mobile operating systems are analyzed and compared with the notion of building the general application described above. In addition, the Bluetooth wireless protocol is explored and a proof of concept is developed using the Android mobile operating system and a variety of publicly available software tools.