Where am I? - Get country

An android mobile actually does know quite well where it is - but is there a way of retrieving the country by something like a country code?

No need of knowing the exact GPS position - the country is sufficient

I first thought of using the time zone, but actually I need more information than that since it makes a difference if the location is New York or Lima.

The background of the question: I have an application that uses temperature values, and I'd like to set the default unit either to Celsius or Fahrenheit, depending on whether the location is US or outside

Solution 1:

/**
 * Get ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code for this device (or null if not available)
 * @param context Context reference to get the TelephonyManager instance from
 * @return country code or null
 */
public static String getUserCountry(Context context) {
    try {
        final TelephonyManager tm = (TelephonyManager) context.getSystemService(Context.TELEPHONY_SERVICE);
        final String simCountry = tm.getSimCountryIso();
        if (simCountry != null && simCountry.length() == 2) { // SIM country code is available
            return simCountry.toLowerCase(Locale.US);
        }
        else if (tm.getPhoneType() != TelephonyManager.PHONE_TYPE_CDMA) { // device is not 3G (would be unreliable)
            String networkCountry = tm.getNetworkCountryIso();
            if (networkCountry != null && networkCountry.length() == 2) { // network country code is available
                return networkCountry.toLowerCase(Locale.US);
            }
        }
    }
    catch (Exception e) { }
    return null;
}

Solution 2:

This will get the country code set for the phone (phones language, NOT user location):

 String locale = context.getResources().getConfiguration().locale.getCountry(); 

can also replace getCountry() with getISO3Country() to get a 3 letter ISO code for the country. This will get the country name:

 String locale = context.getResources().getConfiguration().locale.getDisplayCountry();

This seems easier than the other methods and rely upon the localisation settings on the phone, so if a US user is abroad they probably still want Fahrenheit and this will work :)

Editors note: This solution has nothing to do with the location of the phone. It is constant. When you travel to Germany locale will NOT change. In short: locale != location.

Solution 3:

Use this link http://ip-api.com/json ,this will provide all the information as json. From this json you can get the country easily. This site works using your current IP,it automatically detects the IP and sendback details.

Docs http://ip-api.com/docs/api:json Hope it helps.

Example json

{
  "status": "success",
  "country": "United States",
  "countryCode": "US",
  "region": "CA",
  "regionName": "California",
  "city": "San Francisco",
  "zip": "94105",
  "lat": "37.7898",
  "lon": "-122.3942",
  "timezone": "America/Los_Angeles",
  "isp": "Wikimedia Foundation",
  "org": "Wikimedia Foundation",
  "as": "AS14907 Wikimedia US network",
  "query": "208.80.152.201"
}

note : As this is a 3rd party solution, only use if others didn't work.

Solution 4:

Actually I just found out that there is even one more way of getting a country code, using the getSimCountryIso() method of TelephoneManager:

TelephonyManager tm = (TelephonyManager)getSystemService(Context.TELEPHONY_SERVICE);
String countryCode = tm.getSimCountryIso();

Since it is the sim code it also should not change when traveling to other countries.

Solution 5:

First, get the LocationManager. Then, call LocationManager.getLastKnownPosition. Then create a GeoCoder and call GeoCoder.getFromLocation. Do this is in a separate thread!! This will give you a list of Address objects. Call Address.getCountryName and you got it.

Keep in mind that the last known position can be a bit stale, so if the user just crossed the border, you may not know about it for a while.