java Location api not working

[ravindrashenoy]

Hello,
I use nokia e63, a non gps device. I have tried to run this http://www.developer.nokia.com/Commu...orking_for_E63
example, but its not working. It throws a location request timeout exception.
please help me out

[skalogir]

Hi ravindrashenoy,

Unfortunately, your assumption that you should be at least getting a network based location is incorrect. Network (Cell-ID) based location retrieval is only supported on Series 40 devices with Java Runtime 1.0.0 or later. E63 is S60/Symbian. For network based location retrieval, there is a different way of retrieving the location provider. There are no criteria, but instead an array of methods. More information about network based location retrieval can be found in this wiki article.

JSR-179 (the location API) is supported on E63, but you would need to connect an external Bluetooth GPS receiver. That's the only way, you could make the example you mentioned work on this specific device.

[ravindrashenoy]

hi skalogir,
Thanks a lot for the header. Ill begin working on it. Thanks again

[ravindrashenoy]

Is there any work around to get the coordinates?
I can obtain the cell id, so can i externally use supl.nokia.com for lookup?
Also, any idea how google gets my current location?

[skalogir]

I assume that you get the Cell-ID by using the System property "com.nokia.mid.cellid" and you try to extract coordinate information out of it. Unfortunately you cannot query the supl.nokia.com server directly in order to translate cell ids to coordinates. Typically an API, whether it is provided by Nokia or Google, masks away the mapping from Cell ID to a pair of Coordinates.

This mapping of Cell-IDs to coordinates is a very complex task as each operator has a different coverage in a specific area, so changing operators means you would be getting a different Cell-ID from the same location. You would need a database of all the Cell-IDs of all the operators who provide coverage for a certain area. If you scale that to country or continent level, you can imagine the complexity. Not to mention that on 3G devices the system property "com.nokia.mid.cellid" returns a combination of Radio Network Controller ID and Cell-ID.

Using the supported APIs by the device, therefore, is a one-way solution here. Since E63 doesn't support the LocationUtil package of the Location API, there isn't much you can do in order to retrieve location with E63 (network based). As explained before, your only option is to use GPS-based location retrieval with an external Bluetooth GPS receiver on this example.