Smart phones and mobile devices have limited memory, tight storage, small screens and slow CPUs, as well as a very different usage model than PC based systems. ACCESS has released to open source a number of useful components as the "Hiker" project, which address key needs of mobile applications in a number of areas:

 The Application Manager and Bundle Manager handle the application lifecycle: installation, task launching, transitioning to different tasks, exiting a task, and removing an application. The Application Manager includes a plug-in architecture of launch pads, supporting applications from any variety of execution contexts.
 The Notification Manager, Attention Manager, and Alarm Manager allow tasks to notify one another, or the user of the device, of event- or time-based information; target tasks can receive notifications whether or not they're actually running when the notification is sent.
 The Exchange Manager associates structured data (e.g. a contact or an audio file) with "verbs" than operate on that data (e.g. "call a contact", "play an audio file") allowing all tasks access to different kinds of content.
 Global Settings implements a tree-structured, access-protected registry for system information. It uses the open source component libsqlfs, which creates a virtual file system within an SQLite database.
 The Security Policy Manager and Hiker Security Module use certificates and code-signing to provide security via policy. APIs can be "sand-boxed" into "access tiers", allowing an open development environment while still protecting sensitive resources from unauthorized code.

This presentation will examine the Hiker framework in detail and describe its use in a Linux-based phone platform.