Nexus 7 2012 accepts x86 apk according to Google Play console?

[Simon Taylor]

I'm planning to transition to the multiple apk method for distribution that relies on a combination of the Google Play filters and the apk version to determine the correct apk to download.

I've been doing a few experiments to fully understand the behaviour. One of them was uploading an apk containing a single architecture to the Google Play developer console and looking at "Supported Devices" list. I'm aware that most (all?) x86 devices are able to translate arm instructions to x86 ones, so most devices do support apks that contain only an armeabi native library. With just an x86 native library, the supported device count drops to 194. It was my understanding that these devices are natively x86.

I haven't checked exhaustively against other sources, but all of my random checks (eg Samsung Tab3 10.1) seem to use x86 CPUs. There is one exception I've noticed however - one of the Nexus 7 2012 variants (grouper) is listed as supported. All of the information I can find has that device using a Tegra 3 CPU (armeabi-v7a architecture). I assume it's a bug in the Google Play filters for the device, but am I right in thinking that this would cause the device to download the wrong apk if an intel-only one was provided with a higher version number?

Simon

[Xavier Hallade]

Hi,

The Nexus 7 2012 isn't x86. Maybe some x86 development platforms/emulators have used the same device name and accessed to the Play Store, so it eventually got listed there.

But in any case you don't have to worry about this, as the ABI filter is done depending on what information the Play Store app gets from the actual device, not from this list of devices supporting x86. A Nexus 7 2012 will still get the right APK, even if it also appears on it.

Regards,

Xavier Hallade.