Android device age

Question

Is it possible to query the age of an android device? I want to know, how long a user owns his device. The age of the battery might be a good indicator, but I cannot find an app

Answer 1

That's an interesting question. There's no API to tell when the device was first purchased - but you can look for proxies.

• Read the SMS inbox - what's the earliest date a message was sent or received. (Of course, they could have deleted their older messages).
• Similarly, read the call log and see when they first received or made a call.
• The uptime can also be queried - but I guess most people switch their device off, or otherwise reboot it.
• Looking in the gallery, you could query the EXIF data and see when the earliest photograph was taken.
• With access to the file system, you could look at when certain files were created.

None of those are perfect, but they can be used to put some bounds on when the user first got their device.