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I have three questions on what and how the IMEI can be used. My current knowledge is the IMEI is the devices "Social Security Number", Source Here, so:

  1. Can another phone/device have the same IMEI?
  2. If not, can I have my app use the IMEI to recognize that the device it is on is the exact same device it was used on before?
  3. If this one is also a yes how could I get the Android SDK to pull the IMEI for device validation. (I'm looking for something like ANDROID_PULL_IMEI then Android_VALIDATECHECK_KEY or similar)
Iván Rodríguez Torres
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Ken
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1 Answers1

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CDMA devices have a MEID instead of an IMEI. This answer describes how to obtain them programmatically.

This is not foolproof. I've encountered cheap Chinese devices where TelephonyManager#getDeviceId() returns null or some obviously bogus string like "0123456789ABCDEF".

Community
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Kevin Krumwiede
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  • So what could be used to identify the device and only that device? so the app knows that it can continue to launch in to a password screen. – Ken Mar 05 '17 at 19:46
  • @Ken [This Q&A](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/35157444/telephonymanager-returns-null-for-imei-number-what-can-cause-this) describes some workarounds. I wouldn't worry about it too much. Most devices will return a valid device ID. Just be aware that a few don't. – Kevin Krumwiede Mar 05 '17 at 20:42