Documentation for 5G Values?

[How to]
#1

I was wondering if there is any documentation on the values for cell and unit in the download file, specifically for the 5G (NR) entries. What values area actually being reported in these fields (ie. LocalCellID, NRCellID, something else)? I’ve seen the table on the wiki, but it doesn’t breakdown the values according to the different technologies.

I have noticed that currently about 25% of the entries with a radio value of “NR” have a cell value of 2147483647. This is fairly suspicious since that is the largest positive value for a 32-bit signed integer, and usually indicates that a system has attempted to store a larger integer into a 32-bit variable. There are also a number of other values in the cell column which are much higher (12 digits) than even the max value for a 36-bit integer (which is what the NRCellID should be).

I am curious if these are just artifacts of providers doing testing, or if there is some other type of value that is being put into the cell column.

1 Like
#2

Also how to differentiate between 5G NSA (ie voice channel is LTE, data channel NR) and 5G SA (both voice and data channels are NR).

#3

The max 32-bit integer value indicates that the value was not available. This is how Android API works, this data should be deleted from database as it’s useless. See description of Cell ID property on 5G (NR SA) CellIdentityNr  |  Android Developers and CellIdentityLte  |  Android Developers 5G (NR NSA). According to my experience non-standalone 5G is reported as LTE by Android because this is the main communication channel type, only the data channel is 5G. For 5G SA I didn’t get any correct values reported so far on Android 11.

If you search the Internet you’ll find it very difficult to detect 5G NSA correctly on all devices, e.g. telephonymanager - Detect 5G NR (SA/NSA) in my Android Application - Stack Overflow