Opensignal launches iPhone app

Opensignal the company behind Opensignal Coverage Maps has released an iPhone app available on the iTunes store.

The Android app (available in Google Play) has been around for some time and the iPhone app is unfortunately a poor cousin in terms of functionality due to the limitations of Apple's restrictions in iOS.

The iPhone app is more of a WiFi locator app, though it does have access to Opensignal's coverage data as a map overlay. This is pulled from Opensignal rather than being able to read any information (apart from signal strength and connected network) from iOS itself.

In order to better coverage data, users will still have to download the Android app and use that to map WiFi and cellular signals which are directly exposed in the underlying operating system.

Opensignal could release a Blackberry app as much of the underlying network is also exposed, though whether they will do this is as yet unknown.

BBC launches a crowd-sourced 3G mapping app

The BBC has launched an Android application that measures 3G signal strengths in the background (along with location data), so that real-time UK coverage maps can be produced.

The app is available from the Android Marketplace (a free download).

The app was developed by Epitoro for the BBC.

Though it's a nice idea, there are other solutions out there and OpenSignalMaps have been around for a while and are mapping 2G and 3G signals worldwide, their app is available from the Android Marketplace too.

It's a shame as the OpenSignalMaps app has been around for a while but not had the traction that the BBC can make happen, maybe they should combine forces to aggregate the data.

Neither the BBC or OpenSignalMaps has an iPhone app (it's much harder to do and may go against Apple's T&Cs), though OpenSignalMaps say they're working on one.