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I'm searching for product data, right now I only need smartphone data. I need like every smartphone name and specifications like width, CPU speed, etc. Now I found some reference to semantics3.com which would be perfect, but the only problem is is that they don't allow you to download the data. For multiple reasons I really need to be able to download the data.

Does anybody have more info on this? Is there someone who provides a downloadable dataset like that? Or maybe do the manufactures like Samsung etc offer their smartphone data themselves? I couldn't find any real info on this topic so help would be very welcome. If there is nothing downloadable, would it be legal to scrape it?

Okay so lot's of people recommend scraping for example wikipedia and dbpedia etc. My issues with that however is the fact that the data is not really good organized and also not very complete. So my main question now be 1: "Do manufactures offer their data?(Like samsung offering a list of smartphones with their specs" 2: "Is scraping the website of a webshop or smartphone-comparision website legal, if they have not defined anything about scraping in the Terms?"

vincent kleine
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  • They allow you to download the data (for free) at 1000 requests per day. How fast do you need it? – philshem Apr 27 '15 at 09:52
  • No they don't, you may only temporary cache it but you may not download it, e.g. keep the results from the API stored. – vincent kleine Apr 27 '15 at 15:45
  • You might try contacting the folks from Phone Scoop -- they have a Phone Finder tool that lets you search for cell phones by feature, which might have the data that you're trying to get : http://www.phonescoop.com/phones/finder.php . Their Terms of Use prohibits derivative works & automated scraping, but they might give you a dump. (and if you strip the descriptive text, the objective data should be free from copyright restrictions ... the only issue is if they have an upstream source that they have a contract with that limits their distribution.) But you won't know unless you ask. – Joe Apr 28 '15 at 11:40

7 Answers7

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2022 UPDATE: The best answer is now Wikidata, see this answer.

The most pragmatic solution is to use DBpedia.

  1. Go to the Smartphone page of DBpedia
  2. Scroll to the is dbp:type of section
  3. On the right is a list of hundreds of smartphones
  4. Each of these pages has a lot of information like CPU speed, weight, battery, storage, etc
  5. This information is available as RDF/JSON/CSV. Here is an excerpt of the CSV:

Smartphone DBpedia CSV

The list of smartphones is also available as RDF/JSON/CSV, so it is very easy to download all of this information programmatically.

License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

Nicolas Raoul
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    could you please elaborate on that "future"? – phil294 Dec 14 '18 at 22:22
  • @Blauhirn: We are currently doing our best to convert information from Wikipedia infoboxes to Wikidata property values using tools such as HarvestTemplates and QuickStatements, but it is far from complete. DBpedia is still more complete, compare for instance http://live.dbpedia.org/page/HTC_Wildfire and https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1566050 – Nicolas Raoul Dec 16 '18 at 04:25
  • @NicolasRaoul the link is invalid now, could you kindly update it? – Luk Aron Oct 14 '22 at 18:47
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I would suggest looking into scraping/programmatically downloading this data from Wikipedia. The data can be found in the right infobox of device pages (such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_3G). You can get a list of devices at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone#Devices and also a comparison table which might have everything you want at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_smartphones

Also see:

Community
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Mark Silverberg
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Some of the basic info is in Wikidata. Wikidata has an item called smartphone model.

Using the request below you can get some information. Learn a bit of SPARQL and you will be able to easily get more:

SELECT DISTINCT ?item ?itemLabel ?mass ?cpuLabel ?memoryLabel
WHERE {
  ?item wdt:P31/wdt:P279* wd:Q19723451.
  OPTIONAL{?item wdt:P2067 ?mass.}
  OPTIONAL{?item wdt:P880 ?cpu.}
  OPTIONAL{?item wdt:P2928 ?memory.}
  SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "[AUTO_LANGUAGE],en". }
}

Click to execute the request

Sample result:

enter image description here

Unfortunately most of the infobox properties have not made it to Wikidata yet, so DBpedia is still better at this point. Also, a bit more SPARQL is needed to show the memory units.

License: public domain

Nicolas Raoul
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this stackexchange question has a lot of answers in regards to what you seek, but the most important one being the wurfl (wireless universal resource file) database:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/wurfl/files/WURFL%20Database/

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6812293/is-there-any-information-database-which-lists-all-of-the-mobile-devices-and-spec

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albert
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  • Could you please post an except showing what info is available for one device? Thanks! – Nicolas Raoul Apr 27 '15 at 06:50
  • The list of properties does not contain width or CPU speed. This database seems to be about software capabilities. See http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/help_doc.php – Nicolas Raoul Apr 27 '15 at 06:58
  • the other links provided have that data – albert Apr 27 '15 at 12:14
  • A link is not considered a good answer. Especially a link to a page that contains various answers. – Nicolas Raoul Apr 27 '15 at 15:32
  • a) your answer has links b) i already know this c) why don't you let the person asking the question respond d) nothing is ever good enough for you – albert Apr 27 '15 at 19:55
  • a) We have seen that WURFL does not answer the question, so all that is left in your answer is one link b) Great :-) c) Because I am interested in the general quality of this site d) I often upvote your good answers, I only comment when something can be improved :-) – Nicolas Raoul Apr 28 '15 at 03:21
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    The WURFL database is now behind a paywall: "To access the WURFL OnSite API for Java, PHP, .NET, and Scala, you can visit at http://www.scientiamobile .com/downloads", which then prompts the visitor to "Start a trial". I don't think this answer is valid anymore, at all. – 7heo.tk Apr 22 '21 at 12:42
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I was searching and no good options for this. so made a free restful api to get mobile device descriptions. 6700+ mobile device descriptions available now. you can use it in your applications.

but with this you cannot download the list but you can get the specs of a mobile. or i can create another method to get all devices under brand like that ;)

here is the website https://fonoapi.freshpixl.com/

and github here https://github.com/shakee93/fonoapi

i just made the php client to access the api. someone can help with other languages too..

Please drop me a message if you can help make it better. we help the community from community.

shakee93
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  • Can you please elaborate regarding your data source? (how dated it is? etc.) – N.N. Mar 29 '16 at 11:03
  • I can confirm that this is a very useful database. There is also new data added, although I have also noticed the weight of the Samsung S8 has been removed in the last few days. – Henry's Cat Jul 14 '17 at 12:23
  • I see that the library is open source, but what is the license of the data itself? – Nicolas Raoul Jul 08 '19 at 02:22
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To find all Samsung items please open this link http://www.samsung.com/ae/data-support/search/autocomplete?mType=json&q=samsung

Riyas Rawther
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The unique "primary key" of mobiles phones is the Type Allocation Code (TAC), which comes from the Groupe Speciale Mobile Association (GSMA):

Type Allocation Codes (TAC) are used to create International Mobile Equipment Identity numbers (IMEIs) for wireless devices. The IMEI is a unique 15 digit number and plays an important role in ensuring proper device operation on the network. The IMEI is defined and required by the GSM standards and is in daily use in networks globally.

The TAC is the first 8 digits of the IMEI code: 49-015420-323751

(source)

Unfortunately, as far as I know, the datasets are only available to members.

There are some efforts to compile this data in an open dataset, but the range and technical description seems limited. See, for example:

Public Research TAC Database: Last update was in 2011 unfortunately. Also it does not seem to contain info like width/CPU, only TAC number and phone name. Excerpt:

33010067;   Alcatel;    Radiotelephone ONE TOUCH POCKET
Nicolas Raoul
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philshem
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