Introduction
The OpenCellID Android library was created for making it as easy as possible for Android software developers to support OpenCellID as well as to use the data collected by the OpenCellID community.
The library mainly consists of three features:
- Read cellid data from the GSM modem and GPS data from the GPS receiver and upload the data to the OpenCellID community servers
- Download the cell tower database from the community servers to the smartphone for further local use of the data on the smartphone
- Read GPS data and filter it appropriately.
Why should my app contribute data to OpenCellID?
The data collected by the OpenCellID community has a multitude of benefits for Android app publishers:
- 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 free data availability forever:
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.
- Contributors can use the OpenCellID community servers free of charge:
The usage of the OpenCellID community servers for queries is restricted. Data consumers must either setup their own servers or must pay for using the community servers.
For data contributors the usage of the OpenCellID servers is free of charge.
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 and documentation
The complete source code of the library including documentation is available here on github.
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.
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