Cellebrite Touch - teleport for the phone



    Hi Habr! A few days ago an unusual and very cool device fell into my hands. Probably, from the title picture you can guess its purpose, however, this is only the tip of the iceberg. I was most impressed with the level of implementation. Naturally, all the details are under the cut, but for starters, since this is a detailed article, there will be a small introduction - a business case, so to speak.

    Suppose you own a mobile phone retailer. Well, or take it lower: you decided to start your own business and try to open a mobile communication salon. Your business model has been successful. In addition to selling new phones and their contracts, you managed to create an effective system of additional services. On top of that, you accept old devices for trade-in, and pay good enough money for them. The flow of customers is growing, and you feel that you could serve more people, but the speed of service does not allow this.

    However, you read a lot about effective business in Habré, therefore you are sure that you should try to optimize the processes as much as possible and, of course, you know that attention to details is very important in your business.

    And so, analyzing the time spent, you found that the customers are mostly non-technical people and therefore regularly ask for help with seemingly simple things: transfer the notebook to a new phone, save sms and photos, record melodies instead of those stupid ones that the manufacturer set, install the program. For all this, your sellers take a lot of time, and queues are constantly formed. And accepting an old phone for commission can distract one of the sellers for half an hour or an hour: in addition to saving (or deleting) customer data from the device, you need to carefully examine the phone, evaluate the performance of all components, declare a price and justify it. You can, of course, hire more sellers, open a new point or even several. And you probably would have done that. But as a person inventive and technically competent,

    And after a couple of days of searching, you are already surprised to read about the Cellebrite device, which can do everything you need and more. Let's read it together.

    So, it turns out that there is a whole large company that has long and successfully been involved in data transfer between phones, automates diagnostics and helps build analytics and optimize the operation of retail mobile networks. This company is Cellebrite. Its devices are actively used by operators and retailers in about 60 countries around the world.

    I was given a few days to see the device live. Therefore, in addition to the description, I will also share my own impressions.

    Key features

    Remember when you first bought a brand new smartphone and were going to transfer all contacts and valuable sms from old phones to it?

    It’s good if the data cable is preserved to the previous devices. Then the algorithm is this: copy the content to some Samsung PC Studio or Nokia PC Suite, then export it to a CSV-like format and import it into a Google or Apple account.

    If there is no data cable in the phone, for a start it was necessary to transfer everything to a SIM card, and then insert it into a new smartphone, transfer content from the SIM card to the phone’s memory and synchronize the notebook with a network profile.

    But what if there are more contacts and SMS in the phone than can fit on a SIM card? What should I do if the phone book is not compatible with the format of contacts with the SIM card? Also, do not forget to transfer photos, videos, familiar ringtones.

    At the time of purchase of the smartphone, I had 4 devices with valuable data accumulated. I transferred a part of them manually at one time, simply driving the contacts into Google account. I had to say goodbye to some sms, because in one of the phones I still could not find a way to transfer them from the phone’s memory to the SIM card, and the data cable was long and irretrievably lost. Well, and whether it is necessary to say that all this took a lot of time, even though I am well versed in glands. What to say about people without such skills ... They will be happy to pay a little money for transferring all the content to them in a few minutes.

    The Cellebrite Touch device, as you probably already understand, allows you to solve this and many other problems with minimal effort. It is necessary (and even then not always) only to know the phone model in order to select it from the catalog of more than 5000 supported devices. Yes, that's right: the manufacturer carefully develops a separate procedure for transferring content for each model from the catalog. All the features of a particular phone are taken into account, and detailed instructions are written.

    In those rare cases when the phone is not supported, just remove the SIM card, insert it into the adapter, and all the content will be read through it.

    So, what are the features of Cellebrite Touch:

    1. Transfer data from phone to phone (supports more than 5000 models: iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm and others).
    2. Transfer data from your phone to a SIM card and vice versa.
    3. Back up your phone data to external storage or to the cloud.
    4. Restore data from backup to phone.
    5. Clearing data on the phone and restoring factory settings.
    6. Multichannel diagnostics of operability of telephone nodes.
    7. The ability to quickly and accurately assess the cost of the phone accepted for commission according to the results of diagnostics right in the store.
    8. Download new firmware.
    9. Download applications and content to your phone.
    10. Saving detailed statistics of all operations for further analysis.
    11. Remote monitoring of points of sale, analytics.


    Appearance and equipment

    Externally, the entire set is packed in a black case of impressive size.



    The device itself inside takes up unexpectedly little space.



    And the main space is occupied by a strange case in the form of a book, opening which we see this picture:



    Leafing through:



    Causes respect and looks very promising and serious. Phones from the distant past with a zoo of data cables immediately pop up in my memory, each of which cost quite substantial money, but gave the treasured opportunity to finally put my favorite ringtone or surf the Internet via GPRS from a laptop in the country.

    Here you can find almost all the cables that have ever been invented by numerous companies that uphold their own standard. Now the situation is much better, but people still have a lot of old phones. There are about 50 cables, by the way, and there are still free slots in the album - a reserve for the future. There are, of course, micro-USB, and cables for the line of iPhones. They are all numbered, but the names of phone models are not always indicated on them, which, however, is not a big problem, as we will see below. The numbers themselves are not sequential, there are omissions in the numbering, so finding a cable with a number, say 25, is not a very trivial task.

    Here are the full contents of the bag:



    Now consider the device itself. If you lift the screen, then outwardly it looks like a thick little transformer notebook without a keyboard. In fact, this is a laptop, but its functionality is sharpened strictly for the tasks being solved.





    Above is a hinged touch screen with a protective film, navigation buttons, speaker and various indicators: power, battery, SSD activity, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi.



    Bottom - battery compartment and LED charge level indicators.



    All side connectors are covered with rubber protective caps. It is unlikely that it is waterproof, but they definitely protect from dust.

    On the left you can find a headphone jack and a VGA-output for outputting pictures to an external monitor, as well as 1 USB port and one RJ-45 connector, which, as it turned out later, is essentially a serial port. USB and COM are needed to connect the data cables of a mobile phone - a data source.





    Here is one of the telephone cables:





    On the right is exactly the same pair of USB and RJ-45 for the telephone receiver, a power connector and a slider for turning on and locking the device.



    On the front panel is a connector for a SIM card reader adapter and a ventilation grill.



    The back panel is covered with a hinged lid, behind which you can find several more connectors and buttons: a wireless on / off button, a reset button, a mini-USB port, two additional USB ports, an SD card slot, an Ethernet connector for a wired network connection and Kensington Lock mount - so that the device is not dragged in the communication compartment.



    In general, everything is like a well-equipped laptop. Fortunately, the thickness allows you to freely fit all of these connectors.

    The bag also contains a reader for SIM cards in 3 formats: SIM, micro-SIM and nano-SIM, a





    fairly detailed manual, a DVD without identification marks, a power adapter and, very touched, an anti-static brush to clean the phone's contacts.



    The funny thing is that it was a brush that came in handy; nothing worked without it! About it below.

    It makes no sense to study the technical characteristics deeply, because the device copes with its task without any problems. However, for reference:
    • Processor: Intel Atom Z510
    • Memory: 1 GB
    • Drive: SSD 4 Gb
    • OS: in my copy was Windows XP, however, as far as I know, this is usually one of the versions of Windows Embedded.

    But still, the main essence of the device is proprietary software for working with phones. No wonder the staff of developers at Cellebrite is 150 people. The software is regularly updated when connected to the network, support for new phones is added, errors are fixed, functions are expanded.

    It is possible to customize the device under the brand of the customer (sorry for Englishism). For example, Vodafone did this:



    and Beeline: The



    number of service functions is also configurable. I believe that the price depends on this.

    By the way, about the price - it is by no means small: 90,000 rubles. Yes, it is expensive for a technically simple device, but the supplied software and service support have no analogues. Therefore, the price, in my opinion, is justified. Moreover, it is not required to buy more than one device for a communication salon.

    Testing

    I had to rummage around on a shelf with old iron and take out some half-forgotten phones. I found the following test subjects:
    • quite old, but super-comfortable Nokia 1101 without a hint of data cable
    • almost the same old Nokia 1208, on the bottom of which there is a very small strange connector
    • Sony-Ericson J300i, for which, at the time, I couldn’t rewrite the contacts from the phone to SIM with any efforts, and the data cable was long lost
    • Samsung S5560 is a very strange phone with some terribly braking proprietary Samsung OS. Was once thrown into the hearts due to constant glitches and freezes
    • Samsung Galaxy Note I - my work phone
    • Samsung Galaxy Note II - wife's work phone

    Unfortunately, I don’t have an iPhone, so I couldn’t test it. Of course, it would be great to see how Android contacts and messages are transparently transferred to iOS.

    The application download function on my device instance did not work (it was not activated by the manufacturer - this is controlled remotely via the Internet). I tested reading data from a phone to a flash drive and diagnosing phones. I didn’t check the transfer, because I didn’t want to mix SMS and contacts from different devices, but I didn’t have a completely empty phone at hand.

    The procedure is very simple and does not require reading the manual, because all information is written directly on the screen.

    First you need to select the operation of interest. In our case, this is saving the phone data - “Copy to archive”.



    After that, it is proposed to log in under a specific name to exclude anonymous operations and to collect statistics.



    The next task is to choose a phone from the list: first the manufacturer, then the model. The task is greatly facilitated by the ability to contextual search using the on-screen keyboard.





    At first I inadvertently did not find the Nokia 1101 in the list, so I checked copying from the SIM card. There is a separate item in the list for this. The SIM card can be inserted either into the adapter, or, in the case of a full-sized card, directly into the slot on the device. A red arrow starts flashing on the screen, which indicates the location of the connector on the case (like arrows in the interfaces of many ATMs).



    The next step is to insert the drive to create a backup. The flash drive is inserted into the right USB connector with the inscription “Target”, which is now indicated by a red flashing arrow.



    The fact that a USB drive is inserted is automatically detected, and the system continues to the next step. Here you can select the types of data that you want to copy. In our case, these are only contacts and messages - the remaining items are inactive. We select everything:



    And then the copying process begins. It lasts in case of a SIM card with half a minute.



    When copying is complete, the USB drive is safely removed from the system and the source connector is disconnected. Then a message is displayed indicating the successful completion of the operation and a printout of statistics on the copied data.



    In my opinion, the procedure is very clear, not requiring special skills from the operator.
    The backup copy of the SIM card is as follows:



    The folder name contains the date of operation, the type of device and serial number (in the case of several operations of the same type per day).

    PBB and SMS files are binary. Apparently, they are used by the device for subsequent recovery or copying to another phone.

    Files Report_ContactsSection.html and Report_SMSSection.html are reports on the execution of operations in a conveniently formatted form. At the same time, they contain a full copy of all messages and contacts, which is convenient for visual verification of the operation. The report looks something like this:



    The second phone on my list was the Sony-Ericson J300i. As I said, at one time, I was not able to transfer contacts and messages from the internal memory to SIM, so Cellebrite came in handy here. However, on the first attempt, I was disappointed: the phone was not detected by the system.

    At first everything went well. In the first step, I chose the right model from the list. After that, the system asked me to find the cable with number 25 and connect it to the phone and to the left COM port of the device. Interestingly, for all cables with a COM port, the RJ-45 connector is commonly used here.



    After inserting the drive and selecting the type of content, I started the copy process, but the device did not find the phone and gave a list of possible causes of the failure. One of the points was the recommendation to clean the contacts with the included brush! Even before reading, I just wiped the contacts with alcohol, but this did not help. Then I didn’t have much hope, but nevertheless scratched them pretty hard with a brush. And then everything worked perfectly!



    It was copied, however, rather slowly - 1.5 MB of data was overwritten for about 10 minutes. Even for the COM port is pretty slow. Maybe there have been multiple recording attempts here due to poor contact. But, one way or another, everything went well. It is interesting that during the copying process a strange sound was made, similar to the crunch of the heads of a hard drive. But we have an SSD. When copying via USB, there were no sounds.

    Next was the Nokia 1208, the model of which I was able to identify only by typing the system USSD code. Despite the antiquity of the device, it was on the list of supported ones. And I was asked to choose a data cable with number 103:



    So, after all, it was not a debugging connector on the phone.

    This phone stores all content only on the SIM card, so there was no “Phone” option when copying.
    The system successfully saved SMS messages, but for some reason contacts from the SIM card were not read:



    It will be necessary to write to the developers.

    Next, I copied the data from the buggy Samsung S5560 in the same way. Surprisingly, the operation was almost successful. It was necessary to choose the Samsung PC Studio mode when connecting the phone. The only thing that surprised was the extremely slow USB copy speed. But this turned out to be a specific phone problem, because with the Galaxy Note everything was an order of magnitude faster.

    Nevertheless, this unit decided to throw me a vile thing. Failed to copy SMS messages that are longer than the standard 160 characters. The following message is displayed instead of text:



    I wrote to the Cellebrite developers. Perhaps the problem can be solved.

    I was pleased with the ability for some phones to choose between USB or Bluetooth for connection - suddenly the USB port does not work. The attention to detail in the Cellebrite device is constantly striking.

    Well, as a reference test, I took my Galaxy Note I.



    By the way, for a USB connection, it is possible to automatically detect the phone and automatically detect the model:



    Of the differences from previous phones, I had to turn on the USB debugging function - the instruction appeared right on the screen. This is necessary for Cellebrite to install a special data access application on the phone.

    Next, it was proposed to select the accounts whose data must be copied:



    In principle, there is no particular need for data backup in Android and IOS phones, as everything is usually stored on the server, from where you can create a copy much easier. However, when copying data from one platform to another, the Cellebrite device simplifies the task by several times. Well, just having an offline backup is always useful.

    In the end, I’ll tell you more about the very Nokia 1101. It turns out that I was just inattentively searching. Keyboard search helped



    me find the model I was looking for: But the biggest surprise awaited me further. This phone does not have a data cable at all. However, the device cheerfully reported that it was necessary to get the cable with number 103. The



    cable turned out to be like this:



    It turns out that under the battery there is a special connector for reading data. The cable must be connected to this connector, and the battery is inserted from above into a special groove. In my opinion, very cool!

    Thus, at my place there was not a single phone that would not be supported by the Cellebrite device.

    Separately, it is worth mentioning the function of copying other types of files. Here, in my opinion, not everything is perfect. Firstly, the list of file types is very limited: audio, video, photo. On modern telephones, people store books, documents, and other types of information. They will have to be copied manually. And secondly, copying itself does not take into account the structure of folders and the purpose of files. Folders are created on the backup flash drive: Audio, Images, Ringtones, Videos, into which all files of the corresponding type that could be found are simply stored. At the same time, for example, the recordings from the recorder fell into my Ringtones folder, and in the Images folder, in addition to photos from the camera, there were some textures from the iGO program, as well as system wallpapers. In principle, the desire to copy everything to the maximum is commendable. But I would then keep the directory structure and copy all file types. Indeed, in Cellebrite, each phone model has its own support, so the list of files pre-installed by the manufacturer is known, and you can probably determine which files are created by the user. But this task, of course, is not trivial.

    By the way, all the time of testing (about 4-5 hours) the device was disconnected from the mains. After 5 hours of operation, the battery was discharged, and the system correctly completed operation and turned off. A very good indicator for such a compact battery.

    Regarding the diagnosis of phones: this is a very extensive separate topic. Before selling each phone, it is necessary to thoroughly test it, identify its shortcomings, find broken functions and either fix problems or report them to the buyer.

    Cellebrite allows you to detect problems with the equipment, such as: speaker, screen, keyboard, operability of the camera and touch screen, various sensors, WiFi and Bluetooth, CPU performance, battery status and more. It is also possible to detect software / firmware failures, search for and remove malware.

    Here's what the diagnostic screen for Samsung Galaxy Note looks like:





    For testing, a client application is installed on the phone:



    Then a set of tests starts:



    Based on the results, a report is issued:



    No problems were found on my phone. Upon completion, Cellebrite reminds you to restore the settings:



    Diagnostic functions are now actively developing, new ones are constantly being added. This, at the moment, is the main direction of development in the company.

    Benefits of Application

    Having studied the capabilities of the device, we will now think about the benefits that can be gained to the salons of communication and mobile operators from its use.

    Here are some working business diagrams in Europe:
    • France: SFR and Orange provide data transfer on a fee basis (5 euros per 1 transaction) and on average carry out from 40 to 60 transactions per month at each point of sale. By the way, when testing at Beeline, 137 transactions were performed per week at 3 points of sale.
    • Germany: operators receive income from paid installation of applications from third parties (banks, transport companies, Google and other application developers)
    • United Kingdom: Vodafone provides a data transfer service for free just to increase the level of service for increasing its status (typically English troubles)


    Based on the obvious, the device gives the business the following:
    • increases sales and service at retail outlets
    • optimizes service operations and frees up resources and speeds up maintenance
    • significantly raises the quality of service
    • removes barriers to customers from changing phones
    • increases revenue with new profitable ways of doing business
    • thanks to analytical tools, it allows improving logistics and adjusting the business to the most popular customer requests

    Now we will consider the advantages obtained for individual types of operations in a little more detail.

    Backup and restore:
    • After the client data is transferred from the old phone to the new one, he also has a backup copy of the data on his carrier
    • A person is sure that if a new phone is lost, there is always the opportunity to bring USB to the store and immediately restore data to any new phone
    • Customers with backup data in the “cloud” will return to the store to activate additional backup or restore lost data


    Diagnostics will allow:
    • Prevent phone repair
    • Quickly detect problems with general equipment, such as: speaker, screen, keyboard, camera, sensors, touch screen, WiFi and Bluetooth, CPU performance
    • Detect software / firmware crashes, detect and remove malware
    • Detect battery status
    • Improve the quality of service and increase customer satisfaction by immediately solving the problems here and now.
    • Get significant savings on phone exchange costs
    • Ensure that all necessary tests with the device are carried out before replacing it or sending it to a service center
    • Reduce logistics costs
    • Significantly reduce unnecessary phones in the repair cycle and reduce the cases of sending serviceable phones to the service


    Downloading applications will allow:
    • Download applications at retail outlets: carrier applications, packages of the most popular applications, partner applications: banks, transport companies, etc., third-party applications
    • Paid to download music and movies
    • Promote carrier content across regions as packages
    • Centrally manage a collection of applications using the web console


    Analytical tools will allow:
    • Identify customer preferences and operation trends
    • Centralize statistics of all points of sale in the retail network and dealer network
    • Monitor operations, status and performance indicators
    • Retailers can significantly increase productivity by viewing and analyzing critical operational data and taking corrective actions.


    The following statistics are saved:
    • Point of sale (point code, name, address)
    • Operator id
    • Phone Data (IMEI / ESM, Model)
    • Type of transaction (transfer from phone to phone, backup to flash drive, data recovery, etc.)
    • Transmitted Data Size
    • Downloaded applications (version, manufacturer)
    • Transaction Status (successful, unsuccessful, incomplete, read error, write error)
    • Transaction time and date - real time in the cabin (loading time, duration, start and end, total time for reading and writing information)
    • ID Cellebrite Touch




    Reports are generated daily, weekly or monthly in PDF, Excel or .CSV format. Here, for example, a report on the types of the most common transactions:



    Cellebrite Help

    • The company has 330 employees, of which 150 are in R&D.
    • Around the world, approximately 150,000 Cellebrite devices are installed at 200 mobile operators and retailers in 60 countries.
    • The number of transactions per year for data transfer exceeds 250 million.
    • Cellebrite company was founded in 1999, its offices are located in the USA, Germany, Singapore, Latin America.
    • Since 2007, the company is wholly owned by the Japanese Sun Corporation.
    • Official site


    Prospects for the development of Cellebrite in Russia


    Currently Cellebrite devices are equipped with sales offices of mobile operators.

    Beeline installed Cellebrite Touch devices at points of sale. Now it is about 200-300 pieces. Here is a first-person story .

    MTS has won a tender for the purchase of devices designed to transfer, backup and restore mobile content. In this competition, Cellebrite Touch devices will be delivered to MTS sales offices.

    I really liked the device. Great idea: it really solves the urgent problem of customers. Everything is implemented at a very high level, everywhere attention is paid to details. The price is too high - 90 thousand rubles. But this is not a mass device, not a gadget. For a communication salon, in my opinion, a very profitable investment.

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