How to tell if 'Mobile Network Data' is enabled or disabled (even when connected by WiFi)?

Kevin Bradshaw picture Kevin Bradshaw · Oct 9, 2012 · Viewed 88.2k times · Source

I have an app that I want to be able to use to get a connection status report from a remote query.

I want to know if WiFi is connected, and if data access is enabled over mobile network.

If the WiFi goes out of range I want to know if I can rely on the mobile network.

The problem is that data enabled is always returned as true when I am connected by WiFi, and I can only properly query the mobile network when not connected by WiFi.

all the answers I have seen suggest polling to see what the current connection is, but I want to know if mobile network is available should I need it, even though I might be connected by WiFi at present.

Is there anyway of telling whether mobile network data is enabled without polling to see if is connected?

EDIT

So when connected by WiFi If I go to settings and deselect 'Data Enabled' and then in my app I do this:

 boolean mob_avail = 
 conMan.getNetworkInfo(ConnectivityManager.TYPE_MOBILE).isAvailable();

mob_avail is returned as 'true', but I have disabled Mobile Network Data, so I would expect it to be 'false'

If I turn off the WiFi, there is (rightly) no connection as I have disabled mobile network data.

so how do I check if mobile network data is enabled when I am connected by WiFi?

UPDATE

I took a look at getAllNetworkInfo() as suggested in the comments by ss1271

I outputted the info returned about the mobile network under the following 3 conditions

WiFi Off - Mobile Data on

WiFi On - Mobile Data off

WiFi On - Mobile Data on

and got the following results:

With WiFi OFF:

mobile[HSUPA], state: CONNECTED/CONNECTED, reason: unknown, extra: internet, roaming: false, failover: false, isAvailable: true, featureId: -1, userDefault: false

With WiFi On / Mobile OFF

NetworkInfo: type: mobile[HSUPA], state: DISCONNECTED/DISCONNECTED, reason: connectionDisabled, extra: (none), roaming: false, failover: false, isAvailable: true, featureId: -1, userDefault: false

With WiFi On / Mobile On

NetworkInfo: type: mobile[HSPA], state: DISCONNECTED/DISCONNECTED, reason: connectionDisabled, extra: (none), roaming: false, failover: false, isAvailable: true, featureId: -1, userDefault: false

So as you can see isAvailable returned true each time, and state only showed as Disconnected when WiFi was in affect.

CLARIFICATION

I am NOT looking to see if my phone is currently connected by Mobile Network. I AM trying to establish whether or not the user has enabled / disabled Data access over mobile network. They can turn this on and off by going to Settings -> Wireless and Network Settings ->Mobile Network Settings -> Data enabled

Answer

David Wasser picture David Wasser · Oct 12, 2012

The following code will tell you if "mobile data" is enabled or not, regardless of whether or not there is a mobile data connection active at the moment or whether or not wifi is enabled/active or not. This code only works on Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and later. Actually this code also works on earlier versions of Android as well ;-)

    boolean mobileDataEnabled = false; // Assume disabled
    ConnectivityManager cm = (ConnectivityManager) context.getSystemService(Context.CONNECTIVITY_SERVICE);
    try {
        Class cmClass = Class.forName(cm.getClass().getName());
        Method method = cmClass.getDeclaredMethod("getMobileDataEnabled");
        method.setAccessible(true); // Make the method callable
        // get the setting for "mobile data"
        mobileDataEnabled = (Boolean)method.invoke(cm);
    } catch (Exception e) {
        // Some problem accessible private API
        // TODO do whatever error handling you want here
    }

Note: you will need to have permission android.permission.ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE to be able to use this code.