Android provides the following method to determine the network operator:
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/telephony/TelephonyManager.html#getNetworkOperatorName()
However even the documentation specifically says:
Returns the alphabetic name of current registered operator.
Availability: Only when user is registered to a network. Result may be unreliable on CDMA networks (use getPhoneType() to determine if on a CDMA network).
The problem is that we need a reliable way to detect the carrier so we can identify the traffic source. Has anyone had a similar problem and if so, what is the best solution?
My phone is on Verizon Wireless. On a daily basis, I drive through areas where my phone is roaming and/or has poor reception. Using scripting layer for android, I will log the results of calling getOperatorName() once every ten minutes over the next week.
There is another method that might work in the android.telephony.cdma api. The documentation there is missing the reliability disclaimer. You would only get a Network ID instead of a name. Unfortunately, this requires API level 5 instead of 1 if that matters to you.
Logging the results of the getOperatorName() method yielded nothing special. When I had no service it consistently returned null and when I had service it consistently returned "Verizon Wireless." I'm sure that's not very helpful.
Edit: Addition and correction.
Added - Explanation of link
Corrected - API level 5 not 17
Edit 2: Test results
I am currently looking for a solution for this problem as well. According to this thread one could use CdmaCellLocation.getNetworkId and CdmaCellLocation.getSystemId. Since there are no CDMA networks in Germany, I am unable to check if this works...
You think maybe this was one precurser to Google pulling cdma support? Play within the frameworks or find you another playground is what I hear Google saying. Well that and the fact that carrier apps burned into roms have at times left gaping holes in security.
As to a possible answer to your question... from where are you able to pull info? APN settings might tell you or an assert to a known carrier line in build.prop could pull the info I might need for example. (I do the hobby roms). Then again if you physically inspect a phone, the carrier is usually branded ;) From what vantage are you pulling the info?
Rob
Related
I want to get the PCI of both primary serving cell and secondary serving cell in 5G NSA, but it seems that I cannot get what I want using getAllCellInfo(). It seems that I need to parse the physical channel configuration as below:
{{mConnectionStatus=PrimaryServing,...,mRat=LTE,...,mPhysicalCellId=123},
{mConnectionStatus=SecondaryServing,...,mRat=NR,...}
Does anyone know how to get the (real-time) configuration? Or can I get the PCIs in another way? Thanks very much!
About PhysicalChannelConfig
The only possible way how to obtain PhysicalChannelConfig is via TelephonyManager.registerTelephonyCallback method. You can for example pass an instance of TelephonyCallback.PhysicalChannelConfigListener and you'll start obtaining what you need.
Please note that permission Manifest.permission.READ_PRECISE_PHONE_STATE is required, so your app needs to be a system app of carrier-privileged app.
There were some attempts to adjust this protection level, current status can be seen here. But as of Android 12 there's no way how to get PhysicalChannelConfig if you are a regular developer.
About PCIs
You can sometimes get PCIs of serving LTE and NR NSA cells via getAllCellInfo() as you mentioned. Sometimes there's one instance of CellInfoNr with PCI is present. This behaviour is device-specific.
Generally speaking - Android does not provide any official API you request.
I'm currently working on an application where the code uses the device IMEI number as a variable to store something in the DB. We need to see what device the reading originated from.
ie:
String IMEI = telephonyManager.getDeviceId();
However, I'm not sure how this will behave on phones without network access, such as a wifi only tablet. Will is return a unique value? Will it return null?
I know there are alternatives to using IMEI, and I don't need any explanation on what alternative values I can use. I only need to know what will happen when I call this on a phone with no network access. Please do not provide suggestions on alternative IDs or anything other than what I have asked. I appreciate you taking the time to read this question.
Thanks,
-Mark
You get null.
Just ran into this on an app I wrote 3 years ago, and only just converted to tablet format. I had forgotten we were using IMEI (against the advice you and I both received ;-) ) and we started sending a whole bunch of null device IDs to the server.
Sadly it took a whole lot of network logs before I tracked it down to that little hack.
I've got a problem. I'm developing an android application that scans for wireless accesspoints/routers. I've been testing a couple of devices and I'm getting scan rates of 2, 1, 0.5, 0.1 etc. scans per second.
My goal is to reach 10 scans per second because a router can send beacons 10 times a second. And we need this for our application.
Is there away to make this possible? Perhapse hack a rom and replace the wifi drivers? I've been looking in to this but I can't find anything about this frequentie inside the driver.
The driver used is BCM4329 driver, I can't find any datasheets of the BCM4329 so it's kinda hard to figure this out.
Thanks in advance.
flitjes
I'm not familiar with driver development but I know it's one of the hardest thing in computer science so unless you have good knowledge in linux kernel development I would forget about it.
Moreover, you still need to scan the 12 Wi-fi channels to be sure that you are detecting all access points. An access point broadcasts a beacon every 100ms * 12 channels = 1.2 seconds. Spending less time than that and you risk missing access points.
You don't need to change anything in the device driver, Android makes it available to you to scan for access points. See the documentation.
Although requesting that many scans will probably not be very good for the battery life and the responsiveness of your app...
Your assumption that beacon rate is 10 per second is incorrect. This is really an AP configuration parameter, although 10 per sec is default in most. Besides that, APs do not send beacons simultaneously, if this happens, it's called a collision and a back-off algorithm is used for retransmission. In addition, even scanning 10 times per second doesn't make it certain for you to capture all beacons, like was pointed out in the previous answers.
if u use 4339 driver, you could not set the scan rate in driver or android api which is fixed in 4339 firmware, scan is about all channels && time u spend on each channel, according to the 80211 spec, which is part of mac && phy. in this case u just need to get the beacon, so u should use passive scan and use fixed channel && MaxChannelTime u want.
u have to ask broadcom for speical fw to figure out your problem,
IEEE
Std 802.11-2012 page 978
10.1.4.2 Passive scanning
If the ScanType parameter indicates a passive scan, the STA shall listen to each channel scanned for no
longer than a maximum duration defined by the MaxChannelTime parameter.
I'm trying (wondering if it's even possible) to write an app, that would change the network selection mode automatically, based on some criteria. E.g. change the network operator from Vodafone to T-Mobile (assuming that the SIM card registration will succeed, but I'm not worried about it atm)
Unfortunately, I can't seem to find any way in the API to do it. Anyone has any idea?
I assume, since it's not in the public APIs, there might still be a way to do it, if the phone is rooted. Is that true? If so, where should I look?
Thanks in advance
Sorry but you can't.
You can have a look into the TelephonyManager .
You can know the current operator: getSimOperator(Name) / getNetworkOperator(Name).
You can also check this thread saying "I learn that for the sake of security there aren't any public APIs to manage this so the only option is to send the user to the system PreferenceScreen within my app."
How about using android.telephony.CarrierConfigManager? I read about it on https://developer.android.com/reference/android/telephony/CarrierConfigManager.html and it seems to allow you to change alot of carrier-specific parameters, although the app must be signed with the certificate that has a matching signature to one on the SIM, so it can usually only be implemented by the carrier issuing the SIM. See also https://source.android.com/devices/tech/config/carrier.
I havent found an actual method to actively switch carrier, but if anywhere, I'd expect it to be there.
I'm implementing an way to unique identify the device.
The architect send me the following specs:
devices with Wifi + 3G: IMEI Code
devices Wifi only - MacAddress
Both needs also the Manufacturer + Model for complete the id.
My questions are:
How do I get the IMEI from the device?
How can I get the Manufacturer and Model from the device? (I see theres some constants on Build class for it, but don't know where to use them)
Theres devices with 3G only?
How can I know if the device is wifi only, wifi+3g or 3g only if exists?
Also, suggestions for unique identifiers are available.
PS: I'm already able to get the MacAddres through WifiManager.
You can use the TelephonyManager getDeviceID method. This should return IMEI or MEID. For build information you can see android.os.Build and android.os.Build.VERSION. Also, if its about uniquely identifying your application installs, you may want to go through (and/or show your architect) the developer blog post on Identifying App Installations
How to get IMEI can be found in this question: How to get the device's IMEI/ESN programmatically in android?;
MANUFACTURER and MODEL can be retrieved from android.os.BUILD class.
Theoretically, yes, there might be devices without Wi-Fi but with 3G. But I haven't seen any.
If getSystemService(WIFI_SERVICE) returns null, then there is no Wi-Fi.
android.telephony.TelephonyManager.getDeviceId() gets you 'the IMEI for GSM and the MEID or ESN for CDMA phones'.
Build.MODEL is a static field, so you can just use it like that, so long as you've imported android.os.Build first.
Quite possibly.
You could try calling Context.getSystemService(Context.WIFI_SERVICE) and seeing if it's null, although I suppose it's possible that the service might still exist even if there's no wifi (in such a case, I would expect checking the wifi to return DISABLED.)
These questions have plagued Android developers for a while, see Is there a unique Android device ID?
The Android development team has tried to address these concerns directly in their blog here: http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2011/03/identifying-app-installations.html
In answer to your last question: just test for null when querying for SIM/MAC/Whatever and then act accordingly. It's been reported that there are cases where MAC will return null; see my first link.