Android library

Android library

Why should my app contribute data to OpenCellID? The data collected by the OpenCellID community has a multitude of benefits for Android app publishers, including Significant improvement of time to first fix (TTFF): GPS can take quite some time until it delivers its first GPS position after switching it on. Meanwhile, OpenCellID data is available instantly. This allows for ex. loading a map even if GPS is not (yet) available Significant increase in battery life because of reduced GPS usage: Even in modern phones, the use of GPS can drain the battery heavily. Unlike GPS, the influence of OpenCellID on the power consumption of your app is almost unrecognisable. For many use cases, the position delivered by OpenCellID is a perfect replacement of the GPS position, only to be refined with GPS data in rare cases. This approach can reduce the power consumption of your app significantly, generating a better user experience for your app. Effective localisation, even inside buildings: The current position of the phone can be determined even in areas where GPS is not available (e.g. inside buildings). No necessity to rely on Google: Having a second source for this kind of information is important, not leaving everything to Google, Apple and Co. CC-By-SA license guarantees data availability for ever: The data is collected based on a CC-BY-SA license, so it is available for any commercial or non-commercial usage free of charge. Rely on the biggest open source cellid database and community: OpenCellID is by far the biggest open source database for cellid information. Purpose of the library The OpenCellID library for Android provides all functionality required for uploading cell information from any Android Smartphone to the OpenCellID community servers. The OpenCellID library is an Android component. It was built to help other developers in order to reduce the time and efforts needed to create the similar functionality in their applications. It has been designed for an as easy as possible integration into existing Android applications. Quality assurance Before publishing version 1.0 of the OpenCellID library ENAiKOON has integrated it into several of its Android apps with more than 50.000 users allowing the OpenCellID team to ensure that the library is stable and does not interfere with the host application. The OpenCellID Android library is provided as an Android library project for easy integration. Source code The complete source code of the library is available here. Documentation The documentation for the OpenCellID library integration into existing applications can be found here. OpenCellID API It is not required to understand the OpenCellID API details for integrating the OpenCellID library into your Android application because all this is handled by the OpenCellID library. In case you are curious anyhow, all details regarding the OpenCellID API can be found here.