Retrieving Cell-IDs on Cell Phones via J2ME
Of late I have been working on a Location based reminder service as my final semester project over at r.emynd.us.The location of the mobile device is worked out based on signals from the tower closest to the device, this is done by getting three Important parameters namely the Cell-ID, LAC (Location Area Code) & MNC (Mobile Network Code) from the device and querying an existing database such as Yahoo’s Fire Eagle,Open Cell ID or Cell Spotting to retrieve location information.
Getting this information can be slightly tricky because various vendors use different techniques for retrieving this information. Here is a collection of calls I have found so far:-
Sony Ericsson
System.getProperty(“com.sonyericsson.net.cellid”);
System.getProperty(“com.sonyericsson.net.lac”);
System.getProperty(“com.sonyericsson.net.mnc”);
Motorola
System.getProperty(“CellID”);
System.getProperty(“LocAreaCode”);
BlackBerry
GPRSInfo.getCellInfo().getCellId();
GPRSInfo.getCellInfo().getLAC();
Nokia(Series 40)
System.getProperty(“Cell-ID”);
Nokia(Series 60)
System.getProperty(“com.nokia.mid.cellid”);
If you are interested for getting information regarding the Cell-ID or the LAC on Windows Mobile Devices there’s an excellent Blog Post over at http://dalelane.co.uk/blog/?p=241
PS:-If you are on a Symbian 40 Nokia Device the midlet needs to be signed before it can access the Current Cell-ID.
