Third-party applications have taken the smartphone community by storm. Most smartphone owners have more than one app on their device that they rely on to chat, game, get directions, or share pictures. According to http://www.statista.com/statistics/276623/number-of-apps-available-in-leading-app-stores/, there are almost 4 million apps existing worldwide for the various smartphones. Apple App Store offers approximately 1.5 million apps, Google Play offers 1.6 million, Amazon offers 400,000 apps, and Windows offers 340,000. This number is expected to grow exponentially through 2017.
The goal of this chapter is to introduce you the various applications seen on Android, iOS devices, and Windows Phones. Each application will vary due to versions and devices, but their underlying structures are similar. We will look at how the data is stored and why preference files are important to your investigation.
We will cover the following topics in detail...