Nov 30
Simon Judge is attempting to understand how Google Maps Mobile cell ID-based location actually works:
Hence, my best guess at how this all works is…
App sends IMEI and Cellid (if available) to Google
If IMEI is for operator with location service agreement then get position
else if Cellid available then look it up in Google cellid/position database
else tell the user their phone isn’t supported
He also notes that Java ME, in most cases, is unable to reliably retrieve a cell ID.
February 5th, 2008 at 10:50 am
Thats pretty much how it works. You would (I guess) get the the MCC (Mobile Country Code) and the MNC (Mobile Network Code, i.e. Operator ID). That allows you to uniquely identify the mobile network. Plus the Cell ID, which you match against Google’s DB.
AFAIK Google Maps for Mobile only works on Symbian S60 phones, which can supply these values over an API. As for J2ME, that would only work on a select set of Motorola ones. (I personally used an L6 for a project once.)
BTW: I don’t think Google has any contracts with operators for using their Location infrastructure. Would be way to expensive (even for Google
and is normally bound to stringent legal restrictions (e.g. the user must explicitely grant permission with a separate SMS - which would pretty much ruin the user experience of GMM).
Regards,
Rainer
March 27th, 2008 at 5:11 am
I have WM5 phone and google are able to get CellID from it. Several time I used the program with GPS and I guess that they also use the data from my GPS to be able to match GPS location and current Cell