Why Only "Short" Cell ID?

[RadioRaiders]

I noticed that RIM's "Cell ID" API only returns the UMTS "Short" Cell ID, and not the full Cell ID as displayed in all my other phones. DOes anyone know why RIM does this, or how to make the full Cell ID visable?
Thanks.

[QuiteSimple]

Hi,

you can check
net.rim.device.api.system.GPRSInfo.GPRSCellInfo

methods
getMNC()
getMCC()

will give you the missing values

As per my understanding to locate a cell you need Mobile Country Code, Mobile Network Code and the cell id itself, in BB API those values are returned by different methods

[RadioRaiders]

Thanks, but no, I'm just referring to the getCellID. It returns only the "short Cell ID". I made an app for both Symbian and BB (see my sig), but the Cell ID results are different... there's a screenshot of what I mean below. On the left is a Symbian phone, it returns the full Cell ID, and the "short" cell ID can be dervived from that (and is in parenthesis). On the left is a BlackBerry, and it can only ever return the short Cell ID for UMTS cells. With the short cell id, you can't derive the full cell id because pieces of it are missing.



...every other phone I have (SonyEricsson, Nokia, Motorola) all return the full Cell ID. I don't understand why RIM only gives the short.

I guess this is a question better asked to RIM directly, since it's to do with how the API pulls the info from the phone, and not with the implementation of the API itsself.

[mrwindh]

Regarding cell-id look up you can use the service from Location API. If you search for cell-id at Wikipedia you get more information about available cell-id databases.