3

I've seen the reports on the internet about duplicate android ids (eg. Is there a unique Android device ID? ). They're mostly from 2010, with a couple of updates saying it was still broken in 2011. But what's happened since then? Are there still a lot of devices out there with duplicate IDs, or did OS updates fix them?

(side note: yes, there are other options, like the serial number and telephony id, but there are also reports of those values being unreliable.)

I only need to support 4.0+ (api 15), so if the problem is guaranteed to be fixed there I will be very happy. :)

UPDATE: I found https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=10639 which strongly suggests that devices shipped with >=2.3 are fine, but what about devices shipped with 2.2 and then upgraded? And what about the reports that phones were still broken in 2011 - possibly after 2.3 was released? I hope that those reports were just un-upgraded phones, but I want to be sure.

Community
  • 1
  • 1
Chani
  • 760
  • 7
  • 11

1 Answers1

3

It is not unreliable per se, the bug that plauged 2.2 is no more.

However:

In short, it is reliable, but there will be still some minor instances where you will have issues, specially with cheap devices.

Community
  • 1
  • 1
blindstuff
  • 18,298
  • 10
  • 47
  • 48
  • is correct, your use of `ANDROID_ID` will be dependent on what risk is acceptable for duplicate IDs. In my case, there was no room for risk and we ended up seeding installed devices on login. – CodeMonkey Nov 26 '13 at 04:22