Device Identifiers on Zebra Devices Running Android 10 – The Complete Guide

Darryn Campbell -
3 MIN READ

There are a few sample apps and guides floating around detailing how to retrieve device identifiers on Zebra devices running Android 10 and it is a common area we get questions about so, I thought it made sense to bring everything together in a single place.

Briefly, Android 10 limits access to device identifiers for all apps running on the platform regardless of their target API level, as explained in the docs for Android 10 privacy changes.  This includes the serial number, IMEI, Bluetooth MAC and some other identifiable information.

Zebra mobile computers expose a mechanism to bypass these restrictions on device identifiers by providing the information through a separate mechanism, “OEM Info”.  Initially the device serial number and IMEI were supported with the BT MAC address being added in a subsequent LifeGuard update.  For clarity, the existing Android APIs (for Build.getSerial() for example) have not been modified and continue with their standard Android behaviour, which is to not return device information on Android 10.

The “OEM Info” mechanism exposes device identifiers via a content provider and is documented on TechDocsThere is an additional step before device identifiers can be accessed however which is to grant permission to the application to access OEM Info.

So, obtaining device identifiers on Zebra devices running Android 10 is a 2-step process:

  1. Grant permission to the application for each identifer it needs to access.
  2. Access the device identifiers via content providers exposed by OEM Info.

You are able to grant permission to the application in a number of ways, either the administrator will grant access (e.g. via StageNow or EMM) or you are able to grant access within the app itself using the EMDK profile manager.

The following shows the sample apps & documentation available:

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Official documentation: https://techdocs.zebra.com/oeminfo/consume/

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Sample 1:

Name: Device Identifiers Wrapper

Recommended for: Developers who just want to access the device identifiers without worrying about anything else

Github link: https://github.com/ZebraDevs/DeviceIdentifiersWrapper-Sample

Author: Laurent Trudu

Documentation: https://github.com/ZebraDevs/DeviceIdentifiersWrapper-Sample/blob/master/README.md

Description: App will grant itself permission.  Wraps all the permission and content provider logic into a simple to use wrapper object so the interface your application calls is very simple.

 

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Sample 2:

Name: Device Identifiers Sample

Recommended for: Developers who need to understand the permission model in a bit more detail.

Github link: https://github.com/darryncampbell/EMDK-DeviceIdentifiers-Sample

Author: Darryn Campbell

Associated portal post: https://developer.zebra.com/blog/access-serial-number-and-imei-mobile-computers-running-android-10

Description: App must be granted permission by the administrator, e.g. through StageNow.  Displays device serial number and IMEI obtained through Content provider.

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Sample 3:

Name: OEM Identifiers Sample

Github link: https://github.com/ZebraDevs/OEMIdentifiers-Java-Sample

Recommended for: Developers who want to output the device identifiers to a file for consumption elsewhere.

Author: James Swinton-Bland

Associated portal post: https://developer.zebra.com/blog/granting-permission-access-serial-imei-numbers-mobile-computers-running-a10

Description: App will grant itself permission.  Writes the device serial number and IMEI to an .ini file.

Sample 4:

Name: OEM Identifiers Sample Xamarin

Github linkhttps://github.com/darryncampbell/OEMInfo-DeviceIdentifiers-Sample-Xamarin 

Recommended for: Xamarin Developers who just want to access the device identifiers without worrying about anything else.

Author: Darryn Campbell

Description: App exposes buttons to grant itself permission and retrieve the device identifiers. 

 

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5 Replies

R Richard Venderbosch

How can we get or grant access to the device identifiers under Android 11 or 12 when "Service Access Action" of the EMDK "Access Manager" profile, used here for Android 10, will be deprecated or removed?

M Michael Shumov

We call profileManager.processProfile (...), specifying "SerialPermission", type SET and XML, as in the example (but with our own data, replacing the data in the CallerPackageName and CallerSignature tags) and get SUCCESS. Next, we try to call contentResolver.query (...) with "content: //oem_info/oem.zebra.secure/build_serial", but we get an empty cursor.
We tried to take an example and substitute our application data in XML - the situation is similar. Is there any other way to get the serial number? Or maybe you need some additional settings for the current method?

R Richard Venderbosch

Which device model are you testing on? Which OS build, which MX version is running on your device?

Maybe you can post all relevant parts of your source code - disguising all private information like your value for "callerSignature" ...

D Darryn Campbell

Hi Richard, apologies I missed your original question but it is very valid.  The methods described in this post will continue to work on A11.  For A12, the plan is to move towards delegation scopes to cover this use case, https://techdocs.zebra.com/mx/flux/delegation/.  Note at the bottom of the page, " All EMDK Delegation Scopes are currently allowed by default. A future version of EMDK will allow only EMDK-built apps with an EMDK Delegation Scope to be allowed to submit JavaScript/JSON to ZDM using EMDK ProfileManager APIs".  This is still an area the team are working on and your use case is one I am highlighting with the team to ensure developers like yourself have a seamless transition.

R Richard Venderbosch

Thanks a lot, Richard.