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Knowing which processor you have is very important to make sure you are downloading the right files. One app, nowadays, has multiple versions for multiple processors so that it runs smoothly on each and every phone available. If you only install apps from the Google Play Store, then knowing which CPU architecture your phone has is not necessary, but if you sideload apps, then this information is required as CPU architecture is becoming a factor in more and more scenarios these days, including certain sideloaded app updates and, of course, custom ROMs and Gapps.

As of now, there are three main CPU architectures used in Android smartphones

  • ARM: ARMv7 or armeabi
  • ARM64: AArch64 or arm64
  • x86: x86 or x86abi

There are a couple of 3rd-party apps to find CPU architecture found from this article:

  • Inware
  • Droid Hardware Info
  • My Device – Device info

My question is, can we find the CPU architecture of the Android phone without installing any apps?

Just in case it's relevant, the device I'm using is a Poco X2 with Android 9+.

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3 Answers 3

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It is indeed a pity that this isn't listed anywhere in Settings, not even in Developer Options. The minimum-change way to get the information is as follows:

Turn on Developer Options and USB debugging

This is familiar, and this answer isn't the place to reiterate that.

Ask Android's Linux kernel

adb shell uname -m

The reply will tell you what architecture the Linux kernel in your Android OS is running. It tells you this in Linux terminology, rather than Android ABI names:

  • "aarch64" is 64-bit ARMv8-A, which is Android's "arm64-v8a" ABI.
  • "armv7l" is 32-bit ARMv7-A, which is Android's "armeabi-v7a" ABI.
  • "x86_64" is 64-bit x86, which is Android's "x86_64" ABI.
  • "i386" or "i686" are the basic 32-bit x86 or the Pentium Pro variant respectively, which is Android's "x86" ABI.
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On Terminal apps inside of android (Like "Qute") just type uname -m and you will see architecture of running android (no root needed)

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  • As it’s currently written, your answer is unclear. Please edit to add additional details that will help others understand how this addresses the question asked. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center.
    – Community Bot
    Commented Apr 18 at 7:25
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One way that I was able to find the cpu architecture for my google Pixel was by going to "settings/Apps/See all apps/Clock/App details". That will get you to "Google Play". On that screen below "Installed on all devices" I see "Google SDK_gphone64_x86_64" and it says its "Installed". So you can then infer that my phone architecture is x86_64. I also assume that you can infer that this is a 64 bit architecture (gphone64). So that's one way you can get the architecture without any special application installed or using an "adb shell".

Please note that I'm not sure this exact method will work for all vendor Androids on the market. You may need to look at the "App details" for some app other than clock. So substitute another app's name for clock in the settings path I described above.

It's too bad that the phones cpu architecture is not listed in "settings/system" or in " settings/About phone".

Update: Based on the comments from John and Andrew, I'm going to say that my answer is wrong. This doesn't work as a method for inferring the processor type without the aid of some other tool as mentioned in the other answers. Apparently, the App Store keeps information about all the apps installed on all your devices just by the fact that you visited the App Store. I must have visited the App Store from an Android emulator I was running, and the "app detail" from the App Store confused me. I was hoping that I might find the name of a native library code installed with some app by looking at the "app detail". Apparently that's not the case.

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  • What model Pixel is this? If it's a phone, I'm suspicious that SDK is wrongly labelled, because there aren't any x86-64 based Pixel phones.
    – John Dallman
    Commented Mar 14 at 20:32
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    I have a feeling this is an Android SDK emulator running on an x86 image, while using the Google Pixel template, not a real Pixel phone. That aside, I believe what is displayed on Play Store is actually the device name, which on real Android devices, won't include CPU architecture.
    – Andrew T. ♦
    Commented Mar 16 at 10:59
  • It's an Google Pixel 8. I'm not sure what processor it has, I assumed from the information I see that it is an x86_64 since I got that information using my phone and not an emulator. I will say the I don't truly understand why the screen I mentioned says "Installed on all devices". I certainly could be wrong but that's what I see when I expand "app details" using my pixel. It could be that the App Store details are miss leading. My assumption was that if I found app details about native code that an apps was using, I could infer the type of processor architecture.
    – Tom Rutchik
    Commented Mar 25 at 3:08
  • My "About phone" settings says the device name is "Pixel 8". Maybe, the App Store only keeps track of the last device that the app was installed on. I did recently update an emulator from Android Studio. So maybe that explains it! I won't think that an emulator update would access the Play Store, but maybe it does!
    – Tom Rutchik
    Commented Mar 25 at 3:18

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