Unfortunately, it’s tricky to tell exactly what specifications a phone has from simply using it. Apps require several things in order to run properly; the most important ones being the Android version your phone is running, the hardware capabilities of the device (such as processor speed or size of RAM) and the hardware features of the device (such as an accelerometer or a gyroscope). If we want to make sure a phone can run an app correctly, we’ll want to look at the hardware within the phone to see if we can. Let’s take a look at some of the ways you can find out your device’s specifications.
Check the Settings
First, we can get some information from within the Settings of the Android device. Go into the Settings menu of your device and check for an option that details the Android system info. This can vary depending on your brand of device and whether it’s a phone or a tablet.
As you can see from this screenshot, all we can really glean from this information screen is the model name and Android version. While not much by itself, we can still use this information to search for more in-depth details. There are easier ways to check your system, however, and that’s with the use of apps.
Use an App
Clearly, if we’re going to get into the finer details of the Android system info, we need some additional help. Fortunately, there’s a lot of it that you can download free of charge from the Google Play store. Let’s look at a few examples.
CPU-Z
CPU-Z is the Android version of the similarly-named PC software that allows you to see the Android system info of your device. It’s a free download from the Google Play store with a paid incentive to remove occasional full-screen ads and works even with quite old Android versions. The moment you start it up, you can instantly see just how in-depth the app can be.
From the first tab alone we can see how many cores the processor has, its speed, the architecture, and the GPU. Most of this information is probably not important for the majority of users, but if you need to know your processor’s power, this will give you a very good idea as to what your device uses. Selecting the “Device” tab gives us even more information, such as physical aspects and RAM.
The “Sensors” tab tells us not only what sensors are installed on the device but what they are currently reading.
There’s even a “Thermal” tab which tells you the current temperatures from a device’s thermal sensors.
As we can see here, CPU-Z is an excellent app if you want to know what sits inside your device. Its becomes even more useful if you’re interested in monitoring sensor outputs and temperature levels of your device. If you’re keen to look into the finer workings of your device, CPU-Z definitely fits the bill.
Hardware Info
Hardware Info is another solid choice and comes as a free download without ads. It works very similarly to CPU-Z, giving all the details of the hardware installed on your device. One of the better aspects of Hardware Info is how all of the information is arranged in one window. You can collapse and expand each category which makes it easy to get to the parts you’re interested in.
Hardware Info also displays information related to your device’s cameras in case you want to know more in-depth specifications about its resolution limits and other finer details.
Search The Android System Info Online
If you know the model of your device, and you can’t (or don’t want to) install the above apps on it, you can easily check the Android system info of your device online. If you know the name of your device, you can search it and find its manufacturer page. This can be hit or miss, depending on how easy it is to find the specifications on your manufacturer’s website as well as how in-depth the specs go. If you’d like a sure-fire way of getting all the specifications of a device, search for it on GSM Arena. This website also allows you to compare phones but also makes for a very useful tool for checking the exact specifications of a phone. You can use it to check every detail from processor speed to the sensors installed on the phone.
Under the Hood
Making sure your device is compatible with certain apps can be very cryptic. Thankfully, there are a lot of tools at your disposal to inform you about the exact specifications of your phone. Whether it’s an app or a website, you won’t be left in the dark again. If you wanted to check the details of your device’s hardware, how would you do it? Do you prefer an app, or would you rather search the model name and check a website? Do you use a different method entirely? Let us know in the comments.
