How to obtain IMEI via adb?

Question

I'm trying to track devices, SIMs and airtime cards for test purposes. I have multiple devices plugged into a computer and since the recent update to Android 12, I am not able to get the device IMEI. The IMEI is basically the device's FCC-required serial number and can be obtained from the UI with relative ease, but how can I obtain it via ADB or in some automated method on multiple devices from multiple carriers and OEMs?

Prior to Android 12 FEB patch, I would use service call iphonesubinfo 1 or service call iphonesubinfo 4. But unfortunately after the update I receive back Result: Parcel(ffffffffc ffffffff 00000000 '................') whereas before I would receive a parcel containing the IMEI for processing via script.

Is there a way to get IMEI on Android 12+? I am trying to stay away from using an app. This is a simple thing, from a privileged user (adb shell). It seems like a basic necessity for tracking and logistics purposes.

Answer 1

This command works to obtain IMEI. It works by pressing the dialer key, then typing *#06#, then parsing the text on screen to find the IMEI Label and the next element which contains the actual IMEI. Finally it parses that element by removing all before text=" and all after ".

adb shell "imei=$(input keyevent KEYCODE_CALL;sleep 1;input text '*#06#'; uiautomator dump --compressed /dev/stdout|sed s/\>\<\/\\n/g|grep -A1 IMEI|tail -n1|sed -e 's/.*text=\"//' -e 's/\".*//'); echo ${imei}"

to get just the 16-digit IMEI without checksum, replace the final echo statement with echo ${imei:0:16}

Answer 2

I found a good solution for Samsung One UI

First, run the About menu

adb shell am start -a com.android.settings.ACTION_DEVICE_INFO_SETTINGS

Then dump the UI

adb shell uiautomator dump

View the dump file

adb shell cat /sdcard/window_dump.xml

The IMEI1 in the <node index="12" and IMEI 2 in <node index="13"

Answer 3

I have created a script to extract device information (including IMEI) which theoretically works on all Android versions.

For those interested: https://github.com/micro5k/microg-unofficial-installer/blob/main/utils/device-info.sh