Android Tutorial Android Device Unique ID - Alternative to PhoneId

This is an old tutorial. It will not work on new versions of Android. You should either generate a random value when the app starts for the first time or use the advertising id: https://www.b4x.com/android/forum/threads/advertising-id.101050/#content

This tutorial is based on the following blog post: Identifying App Installations | Android Developers Blog

The standard way to get a unique id is using PhoneId.GetDeviceId. However this method has several disadvantages:
- It requires the "android.permission.READ_PHONE_STATE" permission which is quite a sensitive permission.
- It doesn't work on devices without phone functionality.
- Apparently there is a bug in some devices which return the same id.

Starting from Android 2.3 there is a new field that returns a unique id and should work on all devices (without requiring any permission).

A general solution is to use this field for modern devices and to use a "fake" id for older devices. The fake id is randomly created when the application first runs.

Here is the code (requires the Reflection library):

Sub Activity_Create(FirstTime As Boolean)
   Log(GetDeviceId)
End Sub

Sub GetDeviceId As String
   Dim r As Reflector
   Dim Api As Int
   Api = r.GetStaticField("android.os.Build$VERSION", "SDK_INT")
   If Api < 9 Then
      'Old device
      If File.Exists(File.DirInternal, "__id") Then
         Return File.ReadString(File.DirInternal, "__id")
      Else
         Dim id As Int
         id = Rnd(0x10000000, 0x7FFFFFFF)
         File.WriteString(File.DirInternal, "__id", id)
         Return id
      End If
   Else
      'New device
      Return r.GetStaticField("android.os.Build", "SERIAL")
   End If
End Sub

 

[LucaMs]

Creating a random number that you save in a directory exposes you to the risk of hacking. Using the ID of someone else becomes pretty easy.

I know but all your app(s) is at risk of hacking and I do not think there is a definitive method to establish a unique device ID based on its hardware.

 

[joaquinortiz]

I use it to identify the device in a http server query .
So the server recognizes which device does the query.
Initially, when you install the program, each device informs the server of its ID number, user name, etc..

Regards.

@JoanRPM this post is from 2013. Do you are currently using this in 2020 or what are you using?

 

[Erel]

As the first sentence in the first post says, this tutorial is no longer relevant.