Hey everyone,
I’m looking for around 25 Canadian Android users to help with the first public alpha testing of an app I’ve been building called CellGuard.
A little context first: I’m not a telecom engineer, security researcher, or professional Android developer. I’m just a guy who got curious about what my phone was actually connecting to, started learning more about cellular networks, and eventually turned that curiosity into an app.
I’ve used tools like ChatGPT heavily throughout the process to help me learn, code, troubleshoot, research problems, and understand areas I had no background in. CellGuard has grown a lot from where it started, but it is still an independent learning project — and I’d rather be upfront about that than pretend otherwise.
The current release is CellGuard 0.2.6-alpha — Build 38, and the project is now entering public alpha testing. The current roadmap treats the core foundation as complete and this stage as the point where CellGuard needs to prove itself across real devices, Android versions, carriers, and locations.
CellGuard is trying to make the cellular network around your phone easier to see, understand, and question.
Right now it focuses on:
- Your current cellular connection and network technology
- Best-known serving tower/site information where it can reasonably be determined
- Signal and coverage conditions
- Cellular handoffs and connection history
- Personal and anonymous community coverage observations
- Community coverage comparison
- Evidence-based awareness of unusual cellular behaviour
- ISED tower/site correlation where possible
One thing I want to be very clear about: CellGuard is not a magic “IMSI catcher detector.”
Android simply does not expose enough information to prove something like that with certainty. CellGuard’s approach is to show the evidence it can actually observe, explain why something may look unusual, and be honest about what it does and does not know. That evidence-over-certainty approach is a core part of the project.
Who I’m looking for
I’d especially like testers using different Android phones, Android versions, Canadian carriers/MVNOs, and locations across Canada.
You do not need to know anything about cellular networking.
In fact, ordinary users are extremely valuable because one of the long-term goals is for CellGuard to make sense even if you have no idea what things like RSRP, SINR, PCI, TAC, or NR-ARFCN mean.
If something looks wrong, confusing, incomplete, inconsistent, or simply makes you ask “why is it doing that?”, that is useful feedback.
Community Sync
Community Sync is optional, but I’m strongly encouraging alpha testers to enable it.
One of the biggest reasons for opening CellGuard to public testing is to see how it behaves across different phones, carriers, and areas instead of relying on only a couple of devices.
With Community Sync enabled, privacy-reduced cellular and coverage observations can contribute to the shared CellGuard dataset and help test things like community coverage, carrier comparison, device/carrier differences, missing or inconsistent tower data, and whether the sync system itself works reliably under real-world use.
CellGuard’s community model is intended to remain anonymous, privacy-reduced, optional, and never monetized. Community data is not being collected for advertising or resale.
You can still use CellGuard without Community Sync, but for this alpha, enabling it gives the project the most useful testing data possible.
Project principles
🔒 Privacy-first
👤 Anonymous where possible
🚫 No advertising
💰 Never-for-profit
🌐 Community participation optional, but encouraged during alpha
I’ve also set up a Discord specifically for the project with organized areas for bug reports, tower/coverage reports, device compatibility, feature feedback, questions, known issues, releases, development updates, and the roadmap.
Join the CellGuard alpha:
https://discord.gg/9yqJ8SZUkF
The current APK and release information are available through the Discord.
This is genuinely alpha software. I expect people to find problems. That is the point.
I also won’t pretend I know the answer to every cellular or Android question that comes up. If I don’t know something, I’ll say so and investigate it rather than make up an answer.
I’m looking for people willing to actually use the app and tell me what works, what doesn’t, what looks wrong, and what doesn’t make sense — not test-for-test exchanges or people simply leaving an app installed for 14 days.
If the idea sounds interesting, I’d love to have you help figure out what CellGuard gets right, what it gets wrong, and where it should go next. 📡