In this Android Tutorial, we are going to tell you how to check your Android Phone’s DPI and CPU Architecture. Now you must be wondering why would one to know the DPI and CPU Architecture on their Android phone? Well, the answer is simple, you must know the values for these two if you are going to side-load APKs or manually install Google Play Services on your Android device. All the packages are based on DPI and CPU Architecture of an Android Phone. Therefore, it’s absolutely necessary to take both architecture and DPI into account while doing the manual installations.
A lot of apps (APKs) available on websites like APK Mirror have a different number of files with different combinations of CPU Architecture and DPI. In order to choose the correct file for your Android phone, you must first identify the DPI and Architecture of your phone. After that, you can easily download the right file for your Android Phone. But before we jump onto the guide on How to Check your Android Phone’s DPI and CPU Architecture, first let’s see how the DPI and different architectures work.
There are three types of CPU Architectures, ARM, ARM64, and X86. The last one, X86, is basically Google’s version to run Android on a computer. x86 is not based on the ARM platform. Now comes the other two — ARM and ARM64. The ARM also is known as ARM-v7a is a 32-bit platform which used to power the low-end and budget devices. It would be safe to say that this tech has gotten old and is replaced with ARM64 also know as ARM-v8a architecture. ARM64 is a 64-bit platform and most of the modern devices are based on 64-bit technology. Another thing worth noting here is that the architectures are backward compatible, meaning ARM (ARM-v7a) apps will work on ARM64 (ARM-v8a).
However, this is not the case when it comes to DPI. They are not backward compatible, it means if your phones DPI is 1.x then the apps with 160dpi will only work on your phone. If you try to install an app with 160dpi on a phone having 2.x dpi, it would mess up your app. DPI values determine how the app will show on your display. Therefore, the dpi on your phone should be matched with dpi of the file you are going to download and install on your Android Phone.
It’s enough talking, now let’s go straight to the guide where we will show you how to check your Android Phone’s DPI and CPU Architecture.
How to Check your Android Phone’s DPI and CPU Architecture
- Download and install Droid Hardware Info on your Android Phone.
- Launch the app from your app drawer.
- The application will take you straight to the “Device Page”. From here you can check your phone’s software density (dpi).
- Now to check CPU Architecture switch to the “System” tab. Here note the value written in front of “Instructions Set”. If its arm64-v8a then you have ARM64 architecture and if its arm-v7a then you have a 32-bit platform.
According to above screenshots, I should be looking for an application file with ARM64 + 640dpi.
