3G network speed logger - Android Apps and Games

Hi guys,
Is this the right Thread? Please excuse, but I couldn't find a "looking for XX App"-thread.
I do want to proof to my operator that their 3G bandwidth very often is almost 0 even though the 3G coverage / reception is very well.
So I would need an app that regularly probes the transmission speed and logs that, best with geolocation and signal strength.
Most of the Apps around only log 3G signal strength, which is _not_ what I want: in my case the signal is fine, there's just almost no throughput.
Then there are the speedtest-Apss that take a one-time-only speedtest... That's fine but I would have to trigger it everytime: impractical.
I tried "traffic monitor", but often enough the speed tester wouldn't even start because the 3G speed is too slow for it's calibration/download/upload cycle.
Also, as with my operator, there's often only _very_ small bandwidth / nearly 0 avilable the app shouldn't send too big amounts of data for it's probings or it might timeout / at least it should log that correctly.
in the end there sholud be a way to export the data so I can proof the network's disfunctionality.
Unfortunately all my market searches have been in vain yet. Has one of you guys seen an app like that before?
I would be very glad about any hints and tips.
Thanks in advance!
southy
Disclaimer:
Yes, I realise that such a behaviour will drain battery.

Related

Fieldtrial.exe explanations

Looking for a line-by-line explanation of Fieldtrial.exe.
For example, some articles I've read say Rx Power is the tower strength, while others say RX Ec/Io say that's what I should be watching.
Any guides/FAQs?
Thanks
I'll give it a go...
- Rx Power is the actual power of the signal you are receiving, measured in dBm.
- Rx Ec/Io is essentially the signal to noise ratio (signal quality) of the signal you're receiving. It's a negative number in CDMA because the pilot carrier's signal strength is just a part of the total carrier energy received, so essentially the "noise" is stronger than the signal. I won't go into the gory details of how that all works, but it's pretty cool. Ec/Io is the more important factor to look at if you're wondering how your call will sound and if it will drop...a strong signal is useless if it's dirty. Ec/Io also maps to the "bars" on the phone. -3 dB is the maximum (best) value and -12 or -13 is about as low as you can go and carry a call.
- Rx FER is the received frame error rate. Basically it's how many errors (due to poor signal quality) were detected in the received signal.
- Tx Adj is how much the phone is powering itself back when transmitting back to the tower. Higher values mean you're closer to a tower. I'm not sure of the units here, but maybe just dB.
That's all the signal related stuff. The rest is Network ID, System ID, Channel, etc. The phone also shows the Active Set, which is the PNs (codes that distinguish one sector from another) of the sites you are connected to. This will be 1 site when you're idle, but can be multiple sites when you're on a call. Candidate set is the list of sites that are being considered for promotion into the active set. They are just being measured, you aren't connected to these. Neighbor set is the set of sites that are on the active site's neighbor list. These are nearby sites that your current site might want to hand your call off to if you move towards them. These PNs tell an engineer which site you're on, but unless you have a PN list it's hard to say what site goes with what PN. If you use Google Maps though, and don't use the GPS, it locates you at the cell tower you're currently on.
I hope that helps.
Wonderful! Thank you so much...
I had pretty much given up on getting either Verizon or HTC to answer this for me. "Not supported" was all I could ever get out of them.

[App Idea] GSM/WCDMA Switcher

Hey guys,
As the radio stack is the second cause of battery draining after the display, I was thinking about a way to save battery life by reducing the impact of the 3G connection. Most of the energy saving apps on the market are only disconnecting the phone from the APN, but this isn't a great solution as each app could be set to update at different times and thus being unable to download data even if the user sets some exceptions. So I thought that an application which operates in the following way could be great to save power:
- The phone uses the 3G network while the screen is on;
- It switches to 2G when phone is in standby mode;
- It disconnects the APN data connection while the phone is using a WiFi Network;
Obviously to avoid possible issues during the switch between 2G and 3G the following rules are applied:
- If there's an incoming call or a phone call is being performed, there won't be any radio switch until the phone call is ended;
- If there's an incoming SMS/MMS, there won't be any radio switch until the text message is fully received.
Unfortunately as I'm not a Java developer I can't code anything like this. But let me know what you guys think about my idea and if it's technically feasible... Maybe some developer could be interested into further exploring my thoughts and will try to create such an app
Cheers
I'm not a developer but I think it sounds like a great idea. I go into settings and switch it to 2g when I'm in spotty areas outside of town. I have to work a bit to keep my N1 battery alive all day...
Hello I'm new here.
I don't know if your suggested profiles are the best case scenarios. You would need to calculate your data throughput, not just the radio power.
If you need to send 100 packets, your radio would be on the longest for edge > 3g > wifi. So, even though wifi uses the most power, it would be for a much shorter duration.
A profile for "place calls only" would work somewhat like airplane mode, but still keep track of towers. Your phone just wouldn't register on the network unless you wanted to place a call. You would miss your incoming calls, have no data connection, or sms. But, you could have it check at an interval for voicemail or sms. This would be most useful for "ringer off" situations like class or meeting.
Afaik Android is always connected to the APN even if the phone is not downloading anything, consuming a lot of battery power. On other platforms, i.e. Windows Mobile, the connection can be terminated by user and re-established when an app needs that.
The amount of data downloaded by widgets, Google mobile applications or apps which operates in background like eBuddy or Facebook should be quite low, so downloading the required data by using GSM or WCDMA while the phone is in standby would be pretty much the same. The only difference is that downloading stuff using GSM/EDGE should take much less energy power.
So that's why I thought about the app I described before: the phone can save a lot of energy power while in standby and be back to its full horsepower when there is any kind of user intervention. Pretty much the same thing that the system already does for CPU usage. It scales to the less consuming protocol (or, in the case of CPU, frequency and voltage) to save power
I know on the google api it isn't possible to do this, but I don't think that isn't the problem.
At the moment you have 3 options. GSM only, WCDMA only and GSM/WCDMA. Whenever you switch between the 3 of them, the phone will lose signal for 10 seconds before it can find the best network. So the switcher here is not the best as you will lose connection, and what if you are downloading something at the same time...
What you need is when the phone is on GSM/WCDMA that it knows the best network to pick from depending on the phones lifecycle. GSM/WCDMA loses battery power because it always tries to find the best network to connect to, so for example if you are on GSM it will constantly try to find a 3G network etc (as far as I understand it).
What we need is the ability for the phone to stay on GSM when the phone is idle and then when the phone is woken up to automatically start to search for a WCDMA network and then gracefully switch over like it does now. For this I have no idea if it is possible as I don't know how the scanning of the network works. If it is possible then that would be wicked. But this is what we need.
my preference would be if the phone would stay on 3g as long as any possible even if there would be a more reliable 2g connection and only switch to 2g if there really is no way to connect to 3g. turn of apn if the screen us turned of for longer then 1 or 2 minutes and only check every 15 minutes or so.
most of the time I'm on 3g only mode . since I live in a city I got good coverage almost all over the city. only problem is that when there is no 3g available also my phone is unreachable. I don't really miss data connectivity when there is no 3g since 2g is so slow that I rather have no internet at all but not being sale to be called or texted is a major disadvantage...
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App

[Q] How to stay constantly connected to 'H' instead of '3G'?

I'm in Australia with a HTC Legend, currently running CM7, previously had Sense of course.. however I don't thin this problem is specific to Legend at all.
When I have 'Mobile Data' enabled and I'm in a good reception area, it will say '3G' or 'H' in the notification bar.
I'm not really sure what the difference is, I've heard maybe 3G is slower than H or used to save power etc. But they both occur with the same amount of reception.. either I get 3G/H or G/E if I'm at a place with really bad reception.
However the problem is, when it has '3G' showing at the top, the data speed isn't slower, but NO DATA AT ALL is transferred. Then it switches to 'H' and internet works.
The annoying thing is, it seems the switching between '3G' and 'H' is COMPLETELY RANDOM. I could be looking through market, browsing web, using maps, downloading, streaming youtube and it will continuously randomly switch between the two, turning internet off and on as it does. It's incredibly frustrating because even if I'm in an area with great reception and I know it's capable of fast transfer speeds, while it's stuck on '3G' mode I get no internet at all.
Does anyone know exactly why it does this, what it means or how I can make it to stop switching to '3G' and stay on 'H'? If it's the radio switching to 3G to save battery when it thinks internet isn't being used, I'd like to disable this because it does switch to 3G when I DO want to use the internet, or right in the middle of data being transferred.
Any help is greatly appreciated!
Can anyone provide any info? I'd really like to sort it out!
i think its depend on your provider, u cant always connect at H if your provider dont give u that signal
Snowtoad23 said:
I'm in Australia with a HTC Legend, currently running CM7, previously had Sense of course.. however I don't thin this problem is specific to Legend at all.
When I have 'Mobile Data' enabled and I'm in a good reception area, it will say '3G' or 'H' in the notification bar.
I'm not really sure what the difference is, I've heard maybe 3G is slower than H or used to save power etc. But they both occur with the same amount of reception.. either I get 3G/H or G/E if I'm at a place with really bad reception.
However the problem is, when it has '3G' showing at the top, the data speed isn't slower, but NO DATA AT ALL is transferred. Then it switches to 'H' and internet works.
The annoying thing is, it seems the switching between '3G' and 'H' is COMPLETELY RANDOM. I could be looking through market, browsing web, using maps, downloading, streaming youtube and it will continuously randomly switch between the two, turning internet off and on as it does. It's incredibly frustrating because even if I'm in an area with great reception and I know it's capable of fast transfer speeds, while it's stuck on '3G' mode I get no internet at all.
Does anyone know exactly why it does this, what it means or how I can make it to stop switching to '3G' and stay on 'H'? If it's the radio switching to 3G to save battery when it thinks internet isn't being used, I'd like to disable this because it does switch to 3G when I DO want to use the internet, or right in the middle of data being transferred.
Any help is greatly appreciated!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Its HSPA, what you get depends on your carrier's coverage area. A few cities in the US have them, such as Baltimore. When I flew to Minnesota I got 3G. As far as you not having a data connection on 3G, I believe if you're in an HSPA area you won't get data on 3G. I know I don't (I have a Galaxy S 4G). When you're in a 3G only area you should get data.
Sent from my Galaxy Tab running CM7

[Q] Is there a way to set the threshold for toggling between umts and gprs?

Hi!
This one is for simmodded users.
I ask for a way to set the threshold for toggling between uts and prs connections.
Often I experience the following: having uts with fair signal strength (3-4 bars) then, without leaving the same spot outside the q drops the 3g connection and starts a gprs connection (signal strength full).
If I force the uts connection I mostly get the weaker 3g connection reastablished. Problem with this settings: in areas where I won't have no 3g connection I have to manually switch back to auto setting.
So is there a way to modify the time of automatic connection switch, so I may have longer weak 3g connection before I drop to gprs?
The 4 answers!
Sent from my awesome XT897
I don't know such an app, only the manual way.
Theoretically you could use SmartActions to start an app change to 3G on good locations and change to 2G on bad locations.
However, I don't know such an app for this.
Maybe someone know a better solution.

Data usage when mobile data is off

Hi All,
I recently changed to Dommel, a provider in Belgium, who gives a very detailed list of mobile data use.
I was astonished that I use mobile data every day while my mobile data is standard off because I have Wifi at home and at work.
After asking an explanation from Dommel, I searched the internet for an explanation for this problem and the only relevant thing I found was the following thread:
http://android.stackexchange.com/qu...ing-used-even-when-mobile-data-setting-is-off
In essence, they say that every time you call or get a phone-call, your phone reverts to 3G, HSPA+ in my case, if your provider does not support VoLTE (= telephony over 4G, packet based in stead of circuit-based) and goes back to 4G (LTE) after the call, leading to small amounts of data use during each protocol-switch. Apparently, this hidden data usage while mobile data is off happens all over the world but as only small amounts of data are used, most people do not notice it.
I compared my data usage with my call history and sometimes they coincide, sometimes not.
Then I noticed that many of the small data usages coincide with the typical moments I commute between home and work. Hence, moving seems also to consume small amounts of data maybe due to the handover from one antenna to the other, maybe because one supports 4G and the other only 3G.
I also noticed that amount of data consumed varies between 0.0002 MB and 0.18MB -- one would expect that a protocol switch between 3G and 4G or a handover between antennas consumes more or less equals amount of data.
Luckily, I remained in Belgium when I consumed about 50MB this way and it only cost me a few EUR/month. Looking at the data roaming tariffs of my provider, it turned out that if I had the same issue while traveling in Algeria, it would have cost me about 600 EUR (Yes, you read it right: six hundred EUR for 50 MB).
I have also good news: setting the preferred mobile network type to WCDMA (=3G) in the mobile settings seems a work-around to this problem. According to the tech guy at the provider-side, I did not use any data anymore with this setting unless I put mobile data to on.
I would really like to understand what is going on. Unfortunately, the tech guy at the provider-side really tries to help but seems to understand even less about this issue than myself.
Hence, I felt it is time to call the experts: xda-dev Does anybody understands this hidden data usage while mobile data is off?
regards
Dries

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