How to programmatically get the devices IMEI/ESN in Android

Question

Hey all,

I'm developing a little program which syncs some of the users data from my app on the cloud (just a load of strings, but that's not the point).

To help identify each device uniquely I would like to use the IMEI (or ESN number for CDMA devices) ...so here is the question, does anyone know how to access this programmatically?

Thanks, Tom.

Answer 1

You want to call android.telephony.TelephonyManager.getDeviceId().

This will return whatever string uniquely identifies the device (IMEI on GSM, MEID for CDMA).

You'll need the READ_PHONE_STATE permission to do this.

That being said, be careful about doing this. Not only will users wonder why your application is accessing their telephony stack, it might be difficult to migrate data over if the user gets a new device.

Answer 2

In addition to the answer of Trevor Johns, you can use this as follows:

TelephonyManager telephonyManager = (TelephonyManager)getSystemService(Context.TELEPHONY_SERVICE);
telephonyManager.getDeviceId();

And you should add the following permission into your Manifest.xml file:

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_PHONE_STATE"/>

In emulator, you'll probably get a like a "00000..." value. getDeviceId() returns NULL if device ID is not available.

Answer 3

Or you can use the ANDROID_ID setting from Android.Provider.Settings.System (as described here strazerre.com).

This has the advantage that it doesn't require special permissions but can change if another application has write access and changes it (which is apparently unusual but not impossible).

Just for reference here is the code from the blog:

import Android.Provider.Settings.System;   

String androidID = System.getString(this.getContentResolver(),System.ANDROID_ID);