Differentiate Emulator from Device & Unique IDs

I am working on a game which uses various of the sensors. There is a bug in the Cupcake 1.5 emulator (at least through r2) which causes the Sensor Manager to hang. The advice from the Google Developer Groups moderators is to debug on devices since you can't get sensor information from the emulator. (But look into OI Intents which has a sensor emulator for the emulator. I have not yet looked into it.)

As a long time embedded systems developer this advice is absurd. There is all kinds of development work that can be accomplished without actual inputs, especially on a device with a GUI like the Android.

Additionally, it just isn't convenient reaching over to my G1 to see what it is doing and to manipulate it to check orientation changes, etc. Hitting ctrl-F11 to change orientation on the emulator is much easier.

I started wondering how to detect if the emulator or a device were running an application. This would allow skipping over the buggy Sensor Manager on the emulator to avoid the hang. Putting some conditional coding around sensor code might then allow development on the emulator.

My investigation found two sets of information to differentiate the device and emulator. This information would also allow differentiating among devices so has some use in all applications.

The first set of information is from the OS build. There are a number of fields available. All you need is the import and reading of the available fields. The comments after the code are from my emulator and the G1.

import android.os.Build;
// ...
Log.d(TAG, "config" + "\n " + Build.BOARD + "\n " + Build.BRAND + "\n" + Build.DEVICE + "\n" + Build.DISPLAY + "\n" + Build.FINGERPRINT + "\n" + Build.HOST + "\n" + Build.ID + "\n" + Build.MODEL + "\n" + Build.PRODUCT + "\n" + Build.TAGS + "\n" + Build.TIME + "\n" + Build.TYPE + "\n" + Build.USER);

// trout
// tmobile
// dream
// CRB43
// tmobile/kila/dream/trout:1.5/CRB43/148830:user/ota-rel-keys,release-keys
// undroid11.mtv.corp.google.com
// CRB43
// T-Mobile G1
// kila
// ota-rel-keys,test-keys
// 1242268990000
// user
// android-build

// unknown
// generic
// generic
// sdk-eng 1.5 CUPCAKE 148875 test-keys
// generic/sdk/generic/:1.5/CUPCAKE/148875:eng/test-keys
// e-honda.mtv.corp.google.com
// CUPCAKE
// sdk
// sdk
// test-keys
// 1242347389000
// eng
// android-build


The second differentiator is the Android ID which may be unique to each device. The emulator returns null while the device returns a string. Again, after the code is my results, although I did corrupt my G1's ID since with proper permissions the value can be changed.

Log.d(TAG, "and id " + Settings.Secure.getString(this.getContentResolver(), Settings.Secure.ANDROID_ID));

// G1: 200xxxxxd4cca5x
// Emulator: null