Android: How to programmatically access the device serial number shown in the AVD manager (API Version 8)

Question

How do I programmatically access the value shown in the image below ?

Answer 1

Build.SERIAL can be empty or sometimes return a different value (proof 1, proof 2) than what you can see in your device's settings.

If you want a more complete and robust solution, I've compiled every possible solution I could found in a single gist. Here's a simplified version of it :

public static String getSerialNumber() {
    String serialNumber;

    try {
        Class c = Class.forName("android.os.SystemProperties");
        Method get = c.getMethod("get", String.class);

        serialNumber = (String) get.invoke(c, "gsm.sn1");
        if (serialNumber.equals(""))
            serialNumber = (String) get.invoke(c, "ril.serialnumber");
        if (serialNumber.equals(""))
            serialNumber = (String) get.invoke(c, "ro.serialno");
        if (serialNumber.equals(""))
            serialNumber = (String) get.invoke(c, "sys.serialnumber");
        if (serialNumber.equals(""))
            serialNumber = Build.SERIAL;

        // If none of the methods above worked
        if (serialNumber.equals(""))
            serialNumber = null;
    } catch (Exception e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
        serialNumber = null;
    }

    return serialNumber;
}

I try to update the gist regularly whenever I can test on a new device or Android version. Contributions are welcome too.