SignalCheck - Android app to monitor your Wi-Fi/2G/3G/4G LTE/5G-NR signal strengths

[stlman314]

Mike,

 

Is there any update on the fix for Importing our database back in SCP?

[mikejeep]

9 hours ago, stlman314 said:

Is there any update on the fix for Importing our database back in SCP?

I am trying to resolve the issue described above by Trip; I am not sure if it is a side effect of my workaround or a separate bug. Stay tuned..

[stlman314]

8 hours ago, mikejeep said:

I am trying to resolve the issue described above by Trip; I am not sure if it is a side effect of my workaround or a separate bug. Stay tuned..

Sweet. Thanks for all your time homie!

[pokefan02]

I just sent a diagnostic report. I cannot export my site logs or backup. I did get this screen capture 

[mikejeep]

I just sent a diagnostic report. I cannot export my site logs or backup. I did get this screen capture

That is the issue discussed above your post.. impacts some Android 10 devices. I'm working on a fix.

[pokefan02]

Ok, thanks 

[though]

On 3/24/2020 at 7:02 PM, pokefan02 said:

I just sent a diagnostic report. I cannot export my site logs or backup. I did get this screen capture 

Just chiming in to say I have the same issue with my Pixel 4 XL.

[swintec]

frozen / not updating for a long time signal check info continues to be a problem.

[though]

17 hours ago, swintec said:

frozen / not updating for a long time signal check info continues to be a problem.

Same here.

[mikejeep]

SignalCheck Pro 4.59 is rolling out right now and should be available on Google Play within the next few hours! App update processing has varied widely lately due to changes at Google; please be patient, it may take longer than usual to appear.

There are two major changes included in this update: resolving the issue with frozen/stale LTE data, and the addition of (limited) 5G-NR info. I have not been able to fully resolve the import/export issues yet, but I am continuing to work on that problem. Some users MAY experience an improvement with this release, but I am not positive -- please let me know.

The workaround for stale LTE data is enabled on devices running Android 10 and newer, and cannot be disabled (there is no reason to anyway). Devices running previous versions of Android can enable the option under Preferences > General Settings > Use Stale Data Workaround. There is no advantage to enabling this option on older devices unless you are having issues with stale data. In some cases, enabling this option unnecessarily may impact older phones' performance. Unfortunately, there are reports that this has only fixed the issue on some, but not all, devices. Apparently running an app like Cellmapper will cause the data in SCP to update normally. I am still looking into it.

The limited 5G info is still a "Beta" feature. There is no logging yet, and real-world testing has been extremely limited. If 5G information is detected, it will appear at the bottom of the LTE information; it does not have its own heading or icons yet. On some devices, you may simply see a "5G-NR: true" while on others you may see detailed signal information. Any feedback on this would be appreciated!

Thanks for all of your support!

[bmoses]

i need to send you a diagnostic report. i have the oneplus 7T 5G phone and have not yet seen the limited 5G info pop up. Cellmapper will show my 5G connected state as true but nothing will show in SCP. I'll get you a diagnostic report as soon as i can! thanks for all your work on this!!!

[mikejeep]

1 hour ago, bmoses said:

i need to send you a diagnostic report. i have the oneplus 7T 5G phone and have not yet seen the limited 5G info pop up. Cellmapper will show my 5G connected state as true but nothing will show in SCP. I'll get you a diagnostic report as soon as i can! thanks for all your work on this!!!

Please do.. unfortunately none of the reports I have received so far show the OS reporting any 5G data yet. I did hear that Cellmapper was able to do it. I'm using the native API functions; the diagnostic report you send will show me the raw data being reported. Valid data *should* automatically appear in SCP when it does start showing up..

[swintec]

just out of curiosity, what was the reason android 10 started having stale data?

[swintec]

7 hours ago, mikejeep said:

The workaround for stale LTE data is enabled on devices running Android 10 and newer, and cannot be disabled

unfortunately, this did not seem to fix it on my Essential phone.  i will send over a diagnostic report right now.  thanks for attempting to fix though.

[mikejeep]

On 4/2/2020 at 10:23 PM, swintec said:

just out of curiosity, what was the reason android 10 started having stale data?

On 4/2/2020 at 10:35 PM, swintec said:

unfortunately, this did not seem to fix it on my Essential phone.  i will send over a diagnostic report right now.  thanks for attempting to fix though.

I'm not exactly sure of the reason yet.. there were no issues until I started "targeting" Android 10 in my compiler. I had not changed the core functionality of the app, so it must be something that changed in the way Android 10 behaves. Unfortunately, as you have experienced, I have not found a perfect solution yet. The solution I implemented in the most recent update apparently fixes it for some users, but not all. Complicating things further is that I do not experience the problem at all on my Pixel 3 or Pixel 4, and there are no error messages being logged by any devices -- it's just not updating. Oddly, if you launch another similar app (like Cellmapper), SignalCheck starts updating regularly. I am stumped so far!

[ImmerStark]

I'm not exactly sure of the reason yet.. there were no issues until I started "targeting" Android 10 in my compiler. I had not changed the core functionality of the app, so it must be something that changed in the way Android 10 behaves. Unfortunately, as you have experienced, I have not found a perfect solution yet. The solution I implemented in the most recent update apparently fixes it for some users, but not all. Complicating things further is that I do not experience the problem at all on my Pixel 3 or Pixel 4, and there are no error messages being logged by any devices -- it's just not updating. Oddly, if you launch another similar app (like Cellmapper), SignalCheck starts updating regularly. I am stumped so far!

We appreciate all your hard work!

Sent from my LM-G820 using Tapatalk

[PythonFanPA]

9 hours ago, mikejeep said:

Oddly, if you launch another similar app (like Cellmapper), SignalCheck starts updating regularly. I am stumped so far!

Good to know there's at least a potential workaround for now for those that use the app in more indepth manner for tracking and such.

[greenbastard]

10 hours ago, PythonFanPA said:

Good to know there's at least a potential workaround for now for those that use the app in more indepth manner for tracking and such.

Unfortunately, you have to run both apps on split screen for best results...for now.

[Rickie546]

On 4/2/2020 at 2:18 PM, mikejeep said:

SignalCheck Pro 4.59 is rolling out right now and should be available on Google Play within the next few hours! App update processing has varied widely lately due to changes at Google; please be patient, it may take longer than usual to appear.

There are two major changes included in this update: resolving the issue with frozen/stale LTE data, and the addition of (limited) 5G-NR info. I have not been able to fully resolve the import/export issues yet, but I am continuing to work on that problem. Some users MAY experience an improvement with this release, but I am not positive -- please let me know.

The workaround for stale LTE data is enabled on devices running Android 10 and newer, and cannot be disabled (there is no reason to anyway). Devices running previous versions of Android can enable the option under Preferences > General Settings > Use Stale Data Workaround. There is no advantage to enabling this option on older devices unless you are having issues with stale data. In some cases, enabling this option unnecessarily may impact older phones' performance. Unfortunately, there are reports that this has only fixed the issue on some, but not all, devices. Apparently running an app like Cellmapper will cause the data in SCP to update normally. I am still looking into it.

The limited 5G info is still a "Beta" feature. There is no logging yet, and real-world testing has been extremely limited. If 5G information is detected, it will appear at the bottom of the LTE information; it does not have its own heading or icons yet. On some devices, you may simply see a "5G-NR: true" while on others you may see detailed signal information. Any feedback on this would be appreciated!

Thanks for all of your support!

Mike,

Just got my new S20+ today and updating everything and data in SCP updates sometimes, and sometimes doesn't. Sent you report. Sounds like issue your talking about in here right?

 

Rickie

[Trip]

Mike,

Not sure what happened, but I tested exporting and importing the database file again on my G8X and it worked twice.  I'll let you know if I see it fail again and look for patterns.

- Trip

 

[mikejeep]

SignalCheck Pro 4.61 has been released and should be available on Google Play shortly! This update focuses on bug fixes, mostly related to Android 10. Changes included in this version are summarized below, and the full changelog is always available on the website. Thanks for your support, and thanks to many of you for being patient while you had to deal with the poor performance of the last two versions of the app.

Resolved issue with log import/export features not working on some Android 10 devices. (Pro)
Resolved issue with out-of-memory errors.
Resolved issue with stale LTE data on some Android 10 devices.
Rolled back target API to Android 9.
Unfortunately, targeting Android 10 caused a lot of problems, and after a lot of testing I ultimately decided to go back to targeting Android 9. There should be no visible impact to users, although 5G features might be less functional. Also, Google does require app developers to "target" the two latest Android releases so I will need to revisit this once Android R is released. Hopefully some of these issues will be resolved over time with updates to the OS.

Resolved force closes with Location Service on devices using non-Latin characters. (Pro)
Resolved internal exception with multi-thread permission requests.
Updated external permissions library.
Updated external root functionality library. (Pro)
General bug fixes and code updates.

As always, I appreciate your support and encourage feedback.. thanks!

[swintec]

will try the update today.  can you share the problem that you found for android 10 stale data?

[mikejeep]

12 hours ago, swintec said:

will try the update today.  can you share the problem that you found for android 10 stale data?

Short version: Android 10 changes how frequently cell info is updated, and the native method provided to "force" a refresh of that data does not work on all devices at the moment. So SignalCheck was adjusted to compile against Android 9.

Much longer version: When developing an Android app, you need to set a "target" API, which is basically the Android version that your app is compiled for. Android 9 is API 28, and Android 10 is API 29. It is generally good practice to keep up with the latest API once it has been released and is stable. Google Play also requires apps to set a target API no more than one version behind the most current release; updates are rejected if they target an older API. So, once Android R (most likely API 30) is officially released, future updates must target at least API 29.

The SignalCheck update in late February was the first release targeting API 29. In testing, the stale data issue was not noticed; once it was noticed, it didn't impact all devices (including neither my Pixel 3 nor my Pixel 4, both of which are on Android 10). Once Samsung got rolling with its Android 10 OTAs, it became obvious the issue was related to Android 10.

5G cell info reporting was added in Android 10, so I was hoping that by targeting that API, the data would be better and/or more consistent. Unfortunately I was not able to confirm or deny that since the app itself was working so poorly.

Android 10 changes the way cell info is reported, although it wasn't publicized very well, if at all. I found the change buried in the code reference guide. Cell info is now cached and not guaranteed to be current; a new method to force that cache to be refreshed was added, however it "does not guarantee" that the refresh will actually happen. Once I discovered that, I attempted to implement that method, which resolved the issue for some users, but not all. So I decided to roll back the target API to 28 for now, and hopefully by the time I'm forced to move to API 29, it will be working better. If not, many apps similar to SignalCheck will likely suffer similar problems.

[mikejeep]

Things seem stable, so SignalCheck Lite was updated to 4.61 early this morning, bringing it in line with the latest Pro release. Now I can get back to fixing the log issues and adding new goodies..

[swintec]

I cant figure out what is going on with SC and the S20.

Back when i first got the device, i had to disable 1x connection from showing completely because SC would just keep giving an alert over and over every time it connected to 1x.  I could not find any alert setting that handled this.  Okay no big deal just leave it disabled i guess.

I get up this morning and un-silence the phone and it just keeps beeping and beeping and come to find out its signal check, all out of the blue. I dont know what it is notifying me about because 1x is disabled from showing.  To stop it i had to exit out of SC completely and leave it closed.  Any idea what it up?

FWIW, i have no alerts configured for SC and regardless of that, even if i did why would it just start happening out of the blue over and over.