am having a task for developing an application that uses mobile phone in collection data and the client want to make use of cheapest mobile phone available in the market such as nokia N1280. The application is supposed to send data in a centralized server somewhere then web app for analysis and report generation. The web part there is no problem with me but am struggling to find the best and cost effective methods of collecting data from the field. s there anyone who has an idea of what method could be most effective of data collection? I thought of USSD but am not that familiar with it and am not sure how much it gonna cost my customer. text messages could be a good option but the problem is that it hard to control inputs from the user. Any help? Thanx in advance..
mobile data collection in developing countries is a fairly well researched problem and there are existing free and open source solutions that have been shown to work at scale (thousands of phones, millions of records). try a site like mobile active to get a sense of the options.
my guess is that you'll likely settle on a javarosa-based system like open data kit using $50-$100 phones and gprs for data.
disclaimer: i work on both javarosa and open data kit.