Is it normal for an Android OS upgrade to change bitness on an upgrade?

Question

I support an Android app, that uses native files. (multiple APKs) Some app setup is done on first startup, (which is different for 32bit + 64bit).

Recently I dealt with a bug report, caused by a users OS being upgraded from Android 7.1 to android 8.1. Surprisingly to me, the OS changed from 32bit to 64bit. I don't have direct contact with the user, so I don't know if this was the user manually upgrading the OS on a rooted device, or a standard OS upgrade.

Is this a normal thing that can happen for non rooted devices?

I don't think that should happen but isn't technically impossible. Some details in my answer to Could a 64-bit hardware device run a 32-bit Android version? — Irfan Latif, Mar 02 '21 at 16:38

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 02 '21 at 17:54

I was wrong about what was happening.

I was using a C#/Xamarin call to determine the OS bitness : "Environment.OSVersion.VersionString" Which I mistakenly believed would tell me the os bitness rather than process bitness. (I was already using IntPtr.Size to determine process bitness)

Is it normal for an Android OS upgrade to change bitness on an upgrade?

1 Answers1