Re: [android-developers] Good phone for development - and getNeighboringCellInfo()

2011-06-10 Thread Fred Niggle
To answer your question about using a phone for develoment, I use a
ZTE Racer - cheap but fully up to the job.

However when it comes to findout out why a program crashed the
emulator with logcat output is for superior from proving information
about the state of variables, etc, than any real phone.

Just my thoughts..

On 09/06/2011, Davide Ronchi  wrote:
> Hi all.
>
> I am about to start an Android development project. I would like some
> advice before starting with the project.
>
> First of all, I have done some research on which phone would be the
> best to do Android development. I have seen many suggestions, but most
> people seem to point at the Google Nexus One (or its UK equivalent,
> the HTC Desire). I was wondering if there is anything more recent that
> is as good as the Nexus One. I have seen people suggesting the Nexus
> S, but I'd rather not use a Samsung phone for the reason I'll explain
> below. Also, the HTC Desire S seems to have a signed bootloader, and
> I'd like to be able to tinker with the OS if I will need to during the
> project (this is not a commercial application, it's more of a research
> project, so it's ok if I need to modify the OS). The HTC Desire HD
> seems more like a modern alternative to the Desire, but I have found
> no one suggesting it as a good, modern developer phone for Android.
> Any other suggestion?
>
> For this project I will need to triangulate the user's location using
> GSM cell info. Problem is that sometimes, we will need to triangulate
> the position *after* the phone has lost signal (i.e. the user has
> gotten into an underground transport system). I was thinking of two
> possible strategies to do so:
> 1. write an application that stays in the background and uses
> LocationManager + LocationManager.NETWORK_PROVIDER to receive location
> updates from the network provider and then use the latest known
> location
> 2. log all the cell IDs I see and use the last few ones (together with
> their known location) at a later time to triangulate the user's
> location
>
> Strategy #1 has the obvious advantage that it is supported by most
> Android phones and works reasonably well for what I need to do.
> Problem is, it will drain the user's battery. Even if it is relatively
> cheap to use Network Location instead of GPS to locate the user, I
> need only to locate the user when he/she enters the public transit
> network. If the user goes out of town, my application will keep
> querying the location provider for nothing.
>
> Strategy #2 works reasonably well for my purposes, as I suppose the
> phone will see a different set of cells depending on the entry point
> (and therefore it might not even be necessary to do the actual
> triangulation, I could build a database of (Station Name, Set of
> visible cells) tuples and consult it without even bothering
> translating that into actual coordinates. Also, logging the cell
> information is something that can be done substantially for free, as
> the phone already has that information and I am only reading it and
> discarding it if I don't need it. Trouble is, in this case, that I
> have seen that the function for doing this on Android don't always
> work well on all phones. I know, by reading previous posts on this
> forum, that Samsung phones don't support getNeighboringCellInfo().
> Also, many *other* phones don't support that function.
>
> I was wondering: is there anyone here who knows of a current phone
> that supports getNeighboringCellInfo() *for sure*?
>
> Thanks,
> Davide
>
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Re: [android-developers] Good phone for development - and getNeighboringCellInfo()

2011-06-10 Thread luiX_
For finding a bug, I run the app on the phone watching logcat, if that
doesn't work, run on the phone using the debugger :)
El 10/06/2011 13:43, "Fred Niggle"  escribió:
> To answer your question about using a phone for develoment, I use a
> ZTE Racer - cheap but fully up to the job.
>
> However when it comes to findout out why a program crashed the
> emulator with logcat output is for superior from proving information
> about the state of variables, etc, than any real phone.
>
> Just my thoughts..
>
> On 09/06/2011, Davide Ronchi  wrote:
>> Hi all.
>>
>> I am about to start an Android development project. I would like some
>> advice before starting with the project.
>>
>> First of all, I have done some research on which phone would be the
>> best to do Android development. I have seen many suggestions, but most
>> people seem to point at the Google Nexus One (or its UK equivalent,
>> the HTC Desire). I was wondering if there is anything more recent that
>> is as good as the Nexus One. I have seen people suggesting the Nexus
>> S, but I'd rather not use a Samsung phone for the reason I'll explain
>> below. Also, the HTC Desire S seems to have a signed bootloader, and
>> I'd like to be able to tinker with the OS if I will need to during the
>> project (this is not a commercial application, it's more of a research
>> project, so it's ok if I need to modify the OS). The HTC Desire HD
>> seems more like a modern alternative to the Desire, but I have found
>> no one suggesting it as a good, modern developer phone for Android.
>> Any other suggestion?
>>
>> For this project I will need to triangulate the user's location using
>> GSM cell info. Problem is that sometimes, we will need to triangulate
>> the position *after* the phone has lost signal (i.e. the user has
>> gotten into an underground transport system). I was thinking of two
>> possible strategies to do so:
>> 1. write an application that stays in the background and uses
>> LocationManager + LocationManager.NETWORK_PROVIDER to receive location
>> updates from the network provider and then use the latest known
>> location
>> 2. log all the cell IDs I see and use the last few ones (together with
>> their known location) at a later time to triangulate the user's
>> location
>>
>> Strategy #1 has the obvious advantage that it is supported by most
>> Android phones and works reasonably well for what I need to do.
>> Problem is, it will drain the user's battery. Even if it is relatively
>> cheap to use Network Location instead of GPS to locate the user, I
>> need only to locate the user when he/she enters the public transit
>> network. If the user goes out of town, my application will keep
>> querying the location provider for nothing.
>>
>> Strategy #2 works reasonably well for my purposes, as I suppose the
>> phone will see a different set of cells depending on the entry point
>> (and therefore it might not even be necessary to do the actual
>> triangulation, I could build a database of (Station Name, Set of
>> visible cells) tuples and consult it without even bothering
>> translating that into actual coordinates. Also, logging the cell
>> information is something that can be done substantially for free, as
>> the phone already has that information and I am only reading it and
>> discarding it if I don't need it. Trouble is, in this case, that I
>> have seen that the function for doing this on Android don't always
>> work well on all phones. I know, by reading previous posts on this
>> forum, that Samsung phones don't support getNeighboringCellInfo().
>> Also, many *other* phones don't support that function.
>>
>> I was wondering: is there anyone here who knows of a current phone
>> that supports getNeighboringCellInfo() *for sure*?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Davide
>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>> Groups "Android Developers" group.
>> To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com
>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
>> android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com
>> For more options, visit this group at
>> http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
>
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Re: [android-developers] Good phone for development - and getNeighboringCellInfo()

2011-06-10 Thread rich friedel
I don't know that there is a difference between the emulator and a physical 
device when it comes to the LogCat, variable state and what-not. Besides, not 
only can you run the app on the device but fully debug as well, so I don't see 
a legitimate reason to not use a physical device... unless of course you cannot 
obtain one for whatever reason. With that said, the emulator is PAINFULLY slow 
thus I would highly recommend: use physical device whenever possible and always 
test on a physical device before release!

As someone else mentioned, pretty much any device is suitable. One thing that I 
recommend though, no matter the device, I like to keep one device as close to 
vanilla stock as possible so that I have a baseline performance for an app. If 
you have a modded OS, sometimes funky weird things start happening.

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Re: [android-developers] Good phone for development - and getNeighboringCellInfo()

2011-06-10 Thread Marcin Orlowski
On 10 June 2011 17:09, rich friedel  wrote:

> I don't know that there is a difference between the emulator and a physical
> device when it comes to the LogCat, variable state and what-not. Besides,
> not only can you run the app on the device but fully debug as well, so I
> don't see a legitimate reason to not use a physical device... unless of
> course you cannot obtain one for whatever reason. With that said, the
> emulator is PAINFULLY slow thus I would highly recommend: use physical
> device whenever possible and always test on a physical device before
> release!
>

Unless you target Honeycomb, simulator is quite useable (besides OpenGL
stuff). Not sky-rocketing, but not crawling as HC ones too. It's good to
start with, but in the end real device helps. there are also differences in
firmwares on certain devices that causes some problems and you won't be able
to repro them w/o device


Regards,
Marcin Orlowski

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Re: [android-developers] Good phone for development - and getNeighboringCellInfo()

2011-06-10 Thread rich friedel
Yeah the LG Ally is the bane of my existence! I am actually considering getting 
one used so that I can test on it. That ONE device has something weird going on 
that makes my app useless. It's the only phone that does this too, well at 
least the only one that's been reported to consistantly fail out of the 20,000+ 
 downloads

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Re: [android-developers] Good phone for development - and getNeighboringCellInfo()

2011-06-11 Thread André Coelho
I have done something similar to what you are trying to do. We ran a study a
while back where we compared the accuracy and precision of a time-shifted
location process vs an on-demand one. We wrote an article with our results.
We collected GSM and WiFi data on several locations and we also collected
the Android's Network Provider location coordinates. The GSM and WiFi data
we collected was processed by a perl script that sends the infor to Google's
geolocation API and parses the response with the result (which is location
coordinates).
We found that our method was pretty good compared to the location the device
serves up on-site. Our purpose was to develop a way to annotate events with
location data without the users of our apps incurring in any costs.
There is a caveat you should know about, it's a limitation of the API. If
you are operating your phone in 3G mode you can only get information for the
cell you are connected to, all information from neighbouring cells will show
up with the value -1. However, if you change the radio to operate strictly
in 2G mode, then all neighbouring cell information shows up just fine when
you call the method from the API.
Additionally, from our results, I can tell you that using just GSM data
doesn't provide you with very precise location data. Either use GSM+WiFi or
just WiFi which have nearly identical results. Anyway, it obviously depends
on how precise you want your location data to be.

Regards,
André Coelho

2011/6/9 Davide Ronchi 

> Hi all.
>
> I am about to start an Android development project. I would like some
> advice before starting with the project.
>
> First of all, I have done some research on which phone would be the
> best to do Android development. I have seen many suggestions, but most
> people seem to point at the Google Nexus One (or its UK equivalent,
> the HTC Desire). I was wondering if there is anything more recent that
> is as good as the Nexus One. I have seen people suggesting the Nexus
> S, but I'd rather not use a Samsung phone for the reason I'll explain
> below. Also, the HTC Desire S seems to have a signed bootloader, and
> I'd like to be able to tinker with the OS if I will need to during the
> project (this is not a commercial application, it's more of a research
> project, so it's ok if I need to modify the OS). The HTC Desire HD
> seems more like a modern alternative to the Desire, but I have found
> no one suggesting it as a good, modern developer phone for Android.
> Any other suggestion?
>
> For this project I will need to triangulate the user's location using
> GSM cell info. Problem is that sometimes, we will need to triangulate
> the position *after* the phone has lost signal (i.e. the user has
> gotten into an underground transport system). I was thinking of two
> possible strategies to do so:
> 1. write an application that stays in the background and uses
> LocationManager + LocationManager.NETWORK_PROVIDER to receive location
> updates from the network provider and then use the latest known
> location
> 2. log all the cell IDs I see and use the last few ones (together with
> their known location) at a later time to triangulate the user's
> location
>
> Strategy #1 has the obvious advantage that it is supported by most
> Android phones and works reasonably well for what I need to do.
> Problem is, it will drain the user's battery. Even if it is relatively
> cheap to use Network Location instead of GPS to locate the user, I
> need only to locate the user when he/she enters the public transit
> network. If the user goes out of town, my application will keep
> querying the location provider for nothing.
>
> Strategy #2 works reasonably well for my purposes, as I suppose the
> phone will see a different set of cells depending on the entry point
> (and therefore it might not even be necessary to do the actual
> triangulation, I could build a database of (Station Name, Set of
> visible cells) tuples and consult it without even bothering
> translating that into actual coordinates. Also, logging the cell
> information is something that can be done substantially for free, as
> the phone already has that information and I am only reading it and
> discarding it if I don't need it. Trouble is, in this case, that I
> have seen that the function for doing this on Android don't always
> work well on all phones. I know, by reading previous posts on this
> forum, that Samsung phones don't support getNeighboringCellInfo().
> Also, many *other* phones don't support that function.
>
> I was wondering: is there anyone here who knows of a current phone
> that supports getNeighboringCellInfo() *for sure*?
>
> Thanks,
> Davide
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "Android Developers" group.
> To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com
> For more options, visit this group at
> h

Re: [android-developers] Good phone for development - and getNeighboringCellInfo()

2011-06-11 Thread André Coelho
I have done something similar to what you want. I developed an application
that we needed for a study.
It collects GSM and WiFI data, stores it in a file that I later process with
a perl script. The script sends GSM and WiFi data to Google's geolocation
api and retrieves location coordinates (like those in GPS).
We needed a way to annotate events with location data without the user
incurring any costs. Location information is critical to our work but
doesn't really need to be calculated immediately.
We wrote a paper on it with results of how accurate this method was, turned
out to be pretty good.
WiFi info gets you a better location then GSM (more precise) and sending
both WiFi and gsm doesn't do any better than just WiFi.
Also, there is a caveat if you don't operate the phone strictly in 2G mode
the method that retrieves neighbouring cell info returns -1 for all data.
You can only get information from the cell you are connected to when in 3G.
It's a limitation of the API.
No dia 10 de Jun de 2011 02:39, "Davide Ronchi"  escreveu:

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