Get statistics about your phone use and contribute to scientific research!
Device Analyzer collects usage statistics in the background while you use your phone. Personally identifying information is removed whenever possible while preserving useful information. Periodically the recorded data is uploaded to our server at the University of Cambridge, where we will aggregate it with other people's data and draw inferences from the patterns that emerge.
What's in for me?
- Personal analytics - extracting data from the things we do every day, e.g. phone calls or our movement patterns - is becoming increasingly popular. We provide you with new ways to look at what is happening inside your mobile phone. The website allows you to download all the raw data we collect from your phone.
- See your 3G data traffic and wifi traffic, phone minutes and texts sent.
Why do we collect your data?
Perhaps surprisingly, we know relatively little about how individuals use smart phones. Which of the many features do you use? And how often? Do you often miss calls? How many text messages do you send? Mobile phone carriers know your calling patterns but often don't make them available to manufacturers. They in turn conduct interviews and surveys to see what people like about their phones and what they use them for, but these are always limited to a relatively small group of people.
Device Analyzer performs rigorous, automatic collection. It doesn't get tired after a week of recording what you have done and can provide a large and detailed data set covering a broad audience. We will use this data set to make recommendations for the improvement of future smart phones, extract patterns and trends. Our aim is to provide new insights and recommendations based on what people do.
With your permission, we would like to share your data set with other academic and industrial researchers worldwide so that they can get even more from it. If you don't want this to happen please let us know with a single click in the app and your data will only be used within the University of Cambridge.
What is collected?
Here is an overview of the types of data we collect:
- when you turn on your phone or charge it
- when you make phone calls and send texts
- which apps you use
- wifi and bluetooth devices near your phone
- your coarse (network-based location)
A detailed document containing all data collected is available here: http://goo.gl/EP9E5
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