20 The SAA Archaeological Record • November 2014 O ver the past few years, smartphones and tablets have become essential implements in the day-to-day lives of millions of people. Literally, these devices have replaced notebooks, agendas, cameras, GPS units, and, to some extent, personal laptops, combining the role of all these items in a single, pocket-sized gadget. In archaeology, smartphones and mobile application software can be valuable tools for registering coordinates during field survey, taking notes during excavation, or simply photograph- ing findings. For example, Apple apps have been used in the Proyecto de Investigación Arqueológico Regional Ancash (PIARA) in Peru (DeTore and Bria 2012), in Pompey (Ellis and Wallrodt 2011), and in a geochemical rock-sourcing project in the Upper Columbia River (Goodale et al. 2013). Although some mobile apps have already been purposely developed with educational and scientific goals in mind (e.g., the pioneer case of the Archwilio app; http://cofiadurcahcymru.org.uk/arch/), the development of specific apps for archaeological research has been limited. The most likely reason for this scarcity is that, traditionally, the creation of mobile apps requires specialized development envi- ronments and deep knowledge of software programming, which most archaeologists simply do not have. Recently, however, Google created the App Inventor for Android operating systems, which has proven to be a much simpler way of building Android-based mobile applications in a visual/code- free environment. Here, we introduce the second edition of this online application (the MIT App Inventor) as an emergent and very promising tool for use in archaeological projects, providing an example of how the advanced computing capabilities and connectivity of smartphones, together with customized apps, can greatly support archaeological field survey. Smartphone Choice and Technical Specifications The term “smartphone” first appeared in the late 1990s to describe equipment that typically combined the features of a cell phone with those of other popular consumer devices, such as personal digital assistants (PDA), media players, digital cam- eras, web browsing, or GPS navigation units. Widespread use of smartphones began roughly after Apple released their first iPhone in 2007, and, since then, a myriad of brands and models have emerged and are available to consumers. This explosion in Smartphone use has, in turn, triggered the emergence of an entire constellation of technologies, including the entire market for mobile applications, also known as apps (or application soft- ware), defined as specific software designed to run on smart- phones, tablet computers, and other mobile devices, typically offered for general productivity and personal information retrieval, but also for leisure and professional performance. At present, popular smartphones are, mainly, powered by Google’s Android, Apple’s iOS, Research in Motion Blackberry OS, and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile OS. Each of these systems has its own distinctive features, but all are based on direct manipulation of contents using, in most cases, touch-screen inputs like swiping, tapping, and pinching to control on-screen objects. When choosing a smartphone, the specs to look at are basically the same as when choosing a laptop. Processor performance and RAM capacity are two important features that play a signif- icant role in how well a smartphone performs. Screen size, brightness, and sharpness are also very relevant, as are battery capacity and the diversity of sensors available. For use in archaeological projects, there are some features that may be more relevant than others, depending on whether the phone will be used in the field or in a lab environment. Battery capacity is one good example, particularly when using smart- phones for fieldwork. On average, a typical smartphone battery will last for approximately five hours of talk time and more than one hundred hours in standby mode. During fieldwork, the most desirable scenario is to have a device that operates for a full day of work. In most situations, this will be the case, given that the use of high-consuming battery features (e.g., the GPS SMARTPHONES AND THE USE OF CUSTOMIZED APPS IN ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECTS João Cascalheira, Célia Gonçalves, and Nuno Bicho João Cascalheira is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Algarve, Portugal. Célia Gonçalves is a doctoral candidate at the University of Algarve, Portugal. Nuno Bicho is Associate Professor at the University of Algarve, Portugal. ARTICLE