Question

I need a way to know the uniqueness per user, whether it be for iPhone, Android, or Windows Phone devices. If there is no universal way, i was wondering if saving the phone number would be legitimate (i.e. legal).

Anybody have any experience in this?

Answer 1

I don’t believe there is, or even could be, a cross platform way to do this. Each device has it’s own SDK platform and API’s.

UPDATE: Slight correction on my previous statement as it looks like PhoneGap may be able to give you a cross platform approach.

PhoneGap:

var deviceID = device.uuid;

See: http://docs.phonegap.com/phonegap_device_device.md.html

Here’s how you could do it on each platform:

Android:

android.telephony.getDeviceId()

See: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/telephony/TelephonyManager.html#getDeviceId%28%29

iPhone:

[[UIDevice currentDevice] uniqueIdentifier]

See: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/uikit/reference/UIDevice_Class/Reference/UIDevice.html

Windows Phone 7:

DeviceExtendedProperties.GetValue("DeviceUniqueId")

See: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff941122%28v=VS.92%29.aspx

Blackberry:

FindDeviceForUserResult result=coreWebService.findDeviceForUser(userId, locale, true);
if (result.getFindDeviceForUserReturnStatus().getCode()!= FindDeviceForUserReturnStatusEnumType.SUCCESS)
{ 
       // handle any errors
}
if (result.getDevice() == null)
{ 
       // notify the user
}
int deviceID = result.getDevice().getDeviceId();

See: http://docs.blackberry.com/en/developers/deliverables/7283/Find_BlackBerry_devices_628863_11.jsp