Do Android Phones have a MAC address when connected to 3G?

android 3g mac-address
user631063 picture user631063 · Jun 3, 2011 · Viewed 14.4k times · Source

I was wondering if Android phones have a MAC address when connected to the internet over 3G? I'm assuming they do, so I guess my real question is whether or not there is anyway of accessing it? I haven't found anything from looking through the APIs or by googling, but maybe I missed something.

Thanks in advance

Answer

Sagar Maiyad picture Sagar Maiyad · May 11, 2013

MAC address is specific to network technologies that implement the IEEE 802 standard, such as ethernet. 3G is not an IEEE 802 network, so MAC address really doesnt apply.

That said, there should be very few reasons to use the MAC address in your app, unless youre writing a network driver or doing something specific with the TCP/IP network.

Often people reach for MAC address thinking that it represents a unique device id, when really you should use something like http://developer.android.com/reference/android/provider/Settings.Secure.html#ANDROID_ID to get a unique id that will work across all of the different hardware combinations for android, some of which might include no IEE 802 network whatsoever.

Related questions

How to determine if network type is 2G, 3G or 4G

I have an indicator on my application to display the network type (2G or 3G or 4G) but after getting the network type, how do I know what speed category it should be in? I know how to detect the …

Read More
How can i turn off 3G/Data programmatically on Android?

How can I turn off 3G/Data programmatically on Android? Not Wifi, but 3G/Data.

Read More
Best way to evaluate connection speed

I'm developing an app which needs to get music file by streaming for playing live. In the request song api I can specify the bandwith (eg: 50kbps, 100kbps, 300, 600 or 1 Mbps). The more the bandwith is big, the more the file …

Read More