Name of cell tower on iPhone?

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DrCheese

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#44273 26-Oct-2009 12:47

Does anyone know if it's possible to display the name of the vodafone cell phone tower currently being connected to on an iPhone? It's certainly possible on some of my cheaper phones. Does XT provide this information on any phone, iPhone or not?

tomgeeknz

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#266851 26-Oct-2009 12:59

XT does not. Unsure about Vodafone not a user/customer

antbs

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#266912 26-Oct-2009 16:03

I fondly also remember this feature on my older phones on Vodafone. Pretty sure it used cell tower trangulation to track where I was.

However the iPhone has awesome GPS features so I assume this feature wouldn't be implemented. Maybe there is an app for it?

DrCheese

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#266916 26-Oct-2009 16:11

The iPhone still uses triangulation to locate the phone using towers and satellites. But I was just after information on which tower the phone was locking in to, not for location purposes.

sbiddle

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#266971 26-Oct-2009 18:27

antbs: I fondly also remember this feature on my older phones on Vodafone. Pretty sure it used cell tower trangulation to track where I was.

No triangulation or anything fancy like that.

The GSM spec contains a feature called Cell Broadcast, many GSM networks use this to transmit the cellid or a cellsite name on channel 50. It's something that isn't really that exciting and if you are after better data such as the actual LAC or CellID there are plenty of programs on different handsets to show this.

There are lots of other cool things that can be done with cell broadcast but it's never really taken off.

Aaroona

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#267462 27-Oct-2009 21:22

antbs: Maybe there is an app for it?

Am I the only one that picked up on Apple's ad campaign when I read that.

I am pretty sure that there isnt any inbuilt solution for this, and I don't see how an App would be any use either.

I know it's not an answer to your question but, i'm pretty sure it takes more battery life to display this kind of information (if im not mistaken'), IIRC, I asked Johnr this question a while ago, and that was his answer

(of course, feel free to correct me if I am wrong)

CJPhoto

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#268238 29-Oct-2009 19:26

antbs: I fondly also remember this feature on my older phones on Vodafone. Pretty sure it used cell tower trangulation to track where I was.

I remember being at big boys toys and they must have had a temporary cell tower which they labeled something like "bbrroooo"

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LennonNZ

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#268266 29-Oct-2009 20:38

You can go into the iPhones field test mode and have a look thru all the numbers if you want. and if will (if you look hard enough and can understand it) tell you what cell tower you are connected to and what cell towers it can see.. + lots of other geek information.

*3001#12345#* then call.