Mobile Device going into 'Unknown generic android mobile'

[V_Sirish_Kaushik1]

Since last few months, more and more mobile device data is going into 'Unknown Generic Android Mobile'. We have tried enabling the high entropy flag, but we are not really seeing any progress in dev data. Any suggestions on how to tackle it?

[Jennifer_Dungan · Accepted solution]

I am seeing this too... when I break it down by operating systems, it's mostly Android 10...

If I look at the opposite, Android 10 broken down by Mobile Device Type, the top item is the generic device...

When I look at January vs Last Month, the growth in Android 10 seems way too high for an older Android OS...

This makes me suspicious that "Generic Android 10" is the new default bot identification, sort of like "IE6" was a few years ago... I have no solid evidence to support that at this time however.... but generally you don't see mass adoption of older OSs like that... 

However, I wouldn't immediately action ignoring this data in case my suspicion is wrong... as I said, at this time it's more of a gut feeling....

[V_Sirish_Kaushik1]

Yess, we are observing this Android 10 spike as well. Please let me know if you are able to figure out a solution for this.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Will do.. though at this time my thinking is implementing something like a custom code to try and identify bots based on behaviour...

Sort of like a reverse identification...

If the user:

• scrolls
• hovers
• clicks
• etc

then flag them with a true (and stop processing to avoid running a lot of detection scripts)

Then create an exclusion segment for users that aren't "true"...

The problem will be trying to not throw out screen readers and users accessing through other assistive technologies... 

Basically taking Adobe's "bot detection plugin" that only works on desktop, but making it work way better

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/analytics/implementation/vars/plugins/websitebot.html?lang=e...

[V_Sirish_Kaushik1]

So, on my demo website, I gave some random hits from 3 devices and tried to check the user agent and corresponding mobile device data. In the image below, first hit is from my Redmi phone, running on OS Android 12. As you can see there is a mismatch with user agent string which has for some reason Android 10 in it. 
For the other two hits, I used a rooted android device and getting the data as expected. 

[Jennifer_Dungan]

That's interesting... it looks like Redmi has coded their user agent strangely....

[AntonPy]

It is surprising that only this thread can be found in Google search.
Have you come across official information from Adobe about whether they will fix this issue globally?

[Biggsy50]

Nothing to add .. but on one of my client websites, 'Unknown Generic Android Mobile' visits made up 48% of June 2023's mobile traffic. Same findings for me that ~98% of this traffic had the OS 'Android 10'.

Looking forward to any resolution ...

[f_husain]

Hey All, A bug has been logged at Adobe's end related to client hints where in Device is not being queried correctly. The team is already working on fixing it.

[RakeshMMT]

@f_husain - Any update on this? I am facing this too. Please help to fix this asap.

[FarazHusain]

Hey All, 

This has been fixed. You should not see Unknown Generic in Mobile Device going forward.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Thank you. @FarazHusain do you know if Adobe will be reprocessing the incorrect data? Or just processing new hits from the time of the fix and forward?

[FarazHusain]

Hey @Jennifer_Dungan , the changes deployed should fix this problem going forward. 

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Ok, fair.. thanks for letting us know. 

I will make a note about this for historical purposes.

[Biggsy50]

FYI - for my large UK client's website the 'Unknown generic android mobile' Mobile Device Type values dropped right down on Monday August 7th ... but still make up 7.7% of mobile traffic (8th - 17th August). This compares to 49% in July before your changes.

Of this 7.7% of traffic:

• Android 10 = 73%
• Android 13.0.0 = 13%
• Android 11 = 11%
• Android 12 = 2%
• Android 11 = 0.8%

[xg21]

It's still large for us too. On many of our sites, the "Unknown generic android mobile' still hovers around 10% of All Visits and around 25% of "Desktop/Laptop Visits" (where Mobile Device Type=Other).

[Biggsy50]

Strange that it would be 25% where 'Mobile Device Type=Other'. Our 'Unknown generic android mobile' visits only appear on 'Mobile' (and not desktop/laptop)

[xg21]

You are right of course. I meant to say that it's "...around 25% of "Desktop/Laptop Visits" (where Mobile Device Type ≠ Other)". Thanks for catching my mistake.

[OliviaMa1]

Hello,

We are still ecountering this problem and the volume of "Unknown Generic Android mobile" keeps increasing since May 2023.

Do you have any update on this subject ? Is it a problem with Adobe and how it processes data or does it have to do with Chrome user agent reduction, since Chrome 110 version ?

Some reference on what I'm talking about : https://developer.chrome.com/blog/user-agent-reduction-android-model-and-version.

[scottdvorak]

@Jennifer_Dungan Are we able to reopen this discussion item? We are still seeing the heavy majority of Android traffic coming in categorized as generic. This is about the only thread I can find on this topic. Any updates are appreciated. Thanks!

[sambhavm634375]

Seeing the same thing for my websites re: Android 10 and Unknown Device