Cell tower hunting using a mobile app to determine precise locations

There are some apps out there that are based on that kind of idea, using the signal strength reports to try to "guess" the location of the tower. If there are alot of reports, it can guess it relatively ok. If only a few samples, then it doesn't work well. Google uses also something similar for locating Android users location when they don't have their GPS on (eg. when you open Google maps on your phone)

In my app (Cellumap) I have tower locations on my map (www.cellumap.com) and then you can make/view signal strength plots around it and figure out if your provier is on that tower or not, and by looking at the Cell ID's on the map, you can figure out which sector covers what area exactly. Have a look here for an example:

http://www.cellumap.com/how-to.html

 

Having tried a number of such apps, I found the most utility from "Cellmapper". Others tend to give auto-calculated tower positions, where cellmapper gives enough tools to actually find a site you don't already know the location of.