Accessing Win Mobile phone's Cell Tower info

[William LaMartin]

At http://www.devx.com/wireless/Article/39709/1954 there is an interesting
example of a program in C# for a Windows Mobile phone that should return the
current cell tower information for the device.

Has anyone tried this and been able to retrieve that information. The
code works fine for me until the line

// use RIL to get cell tower info with the RIL handle just created
hRes = RIL_GetCellTowerInfo(hRil);

in Ril.cs.

There the program hangs and never returns the information.

My phone is an HTC 6800 running Win Mobile 6.1.

Additionally, does anyone know if the above project works on some phone but
not all?

Thanks

 

[Gregory A. Beamer]

At http://www.devx.com/wireless/Article/39709/1954 there is an
interesting example of a program in C# for a Windows Mobile phone that
should return the current cell tower information for the device.

Has anyone tried this and been able to retrieve that information.
The code works fine for me until the line

// use RIL to get cell tower info with the RIL handle just created
hRes = RIL_GetCellTowerInfo(hRil);

in Ril.cs.

There the program hangs and never returns the information.

My phone is an HTC 6800 running Win Mobile 6.1.

Additionally, does anyone know if the above project works on some
phone but not all?

Mobile is tricky, for a variety of reasons.

1. You have to make sure you have the proper version of the OS. There
are a variety of Windows Mobile versions.

2. You often have to add additional bits to get at pieces of the OS,
which poke down into the hardware.

3. Phone manufacturers often lock certain features of the phone and then
require a developer to pay to get the SDK to unlock the features.

The industry will change, but the current model is "you develop for
mobile, you pay to develop".

The exception to the above rule is often on phones that work on a
network you do not necessarily want to be on. For example, the Java SDKs
for Sprint are unlocked only if you are on iDen (former Nextel). You
have to pay to unlock on a CDMA phone.

I did not directly answer your question, but hopefully gave you some
good reasons why it might not work.

NOTE: The only thing you can control is see if there is some mobile
library in the Mobile SDK that you are missing. If the phone has
features locked, you will have to hack, which could void all warranties
if you phone craps out.


--
Gregory A. Beamer
MVP; MCP: +I, SE, SD, DBA

Twitter: @gbworld
Blog: http://gregorybeamer.spaces.live.com

*******************************************
| Think outside the box! |
*******************************************

 

[Ignacio Machin ( .NET/ C# MVP )]

Athttp://www.devx.com/wireless/Article/39709/1954there is an interesting
example of a program in C# for a Windows Mobile phone that should return the
current cell tower information for the device.

Hi,

You are in the wrong group, you should ask in the compactframework NG.
without seeing the code it might be possible that the
RIL_GetCellTowerInfo method (which sounds like the "meat" method) is
blocking while getting back the info.
A possible solution for this is calling the method in a background
thread and send an event to the UI when the operation finish

 

[William LaMartin]

I will ask the question in the Compactframework group, but I asked here
since there is so little activity there.

Regarding:

A possible solution for this is calling the method in a background
thread and send an event to the UI when the operation finish

I believe this is what the code is doing. It actually hangs while it is
waiting for the cell tower info to be returned since no info is returned.


message

Athttp://www.devx.com/wireless/Article/39709/1954there is an interesting
example of a program in C# for a Windows Mobile phone that should return
the
current cell tower information for the device.

Hi,

You are in the wrong group, you should ask in the compactframework NG.
without seeing the code it might be possible that the
RIL_GetCellTowerInfo method (which sounds like the "meat" method) is
blocking while getting back the info.
A possible solution for this is calling the method in a background
thread and send an event to the UI when the operation finish