What's installed on every Android phone (and what's optional)
Every Android device that passes Play Store certification ships with a base set of "system libraries" — pre-installed shared libraries that apps can link against without bundling their own copy. The list looks similar from one phone to the next, but the differences are interesting, and they tell you something about what each manufacturer cares about.
We pulled the system library distribution from 28,077 devices in the catalog. Here's what's actually universal, and what isn't.
Universal — present on essentially every device
| Library | Devices | Share | What it is |
|---|---:|---:|---|
| android.test.runner | 28,077 | 100.0% | The Android instrumentation test framework |
| com.android.location.provider | 28,077 | 100.0% | The system-level location provider abstraction |
| javax.obex | 28,076 | 100.0% | OBEX protocol for Bluetooth file transfer |
| com.android.future.usb.accessory | 27,596 | 98.3% | USB OTG accessory support |
| com.android.media.remotedisplay | 27,048 | 96.3% | Cast/wireless display protocol shim |
| com.android.mediadrm.signer | 25,990 | 92.6% | DRM key signing for media playback |
These are the AOSP base libraries. If you're targeting Android, you can assume they're available.
Google Play Services — present where Google services are licensed
| Library | Devices | Share |
|---|---:|---:|
| com.google.android.gms | 24,978 | 89.0% |
| com.google.android.maps | 15,905 | 56.6% |
| com.google.android.media.effects | 11,465 | 40.8% |
com.google.android.gms (Google Mobile Services) is on 89% of catalog devices. The 11% missing it are:
- Huawei phones post-2019, which Google revoked the GMS license for. These ship with Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) instead.
- Chinese-domestic-market phones that ship without Google services entirely (Xiaomi, Honor, vivo, OPPO domestic SKUs).
- Some industrial / point-of-sale Android devices that don't bundle GMS to keep the boot small.
- Older Android tablets from manufacturers that didn't pay the GMS licensing fee.
If you're shipping an app that depends on Google Maps SDK, Firebase, Play Services billing, or anything com.google.android.gms.*, you're targeting 89% of catalog devices. The other 11% need either an HMS port or a graceful "Google services not available" path.
Manufacturer-specific libraries
Now the interesting differences. These libraries are present on some manufacturers and absent from others — they're often a fingerprint of the OEM's customizations:
| Library | Devices | Share | Source |
|---|---:|---:|---|
| com.android.nfc_extras | 7,537 | 26.8% | NFC stack extras (only on NFC-capable phones) |
| com.google.android.dialer.support | 5,861 | 20.9% | Google Dialer support library |
| libOpenCL.so | 5,673 | 20.2% | OpenCL compute (mostly Qualcomm, some Mali) |
| com.google.widevine.software.drm | 5,638 | 20.1% | Widevine DRM (for video streaming) |
| org.simalliance.openmobileapi | 4,464 | 15.9% | SIM-card secure-element access |
| com.qualcomm.qcrilhook | 4,440 | 15.8% | Qualcomm RIL (radio interface) hook — Qualcomm chipset only |
A few things this surfaces:
OpenCL on 20% of devices. OpenCL is a compute API for offloading work to the GPU. The 20% share is heavily concentrated in Qualcomm-Adreno devices — Adreno has historically had the best OpenCL drivers. Most Mali devices technically support OpenCL too but the driver support is spottier.
Widevine at 20%. Widevine is Google's DRM scheme for video streaming. The catalog devices reporting it are the ones that meet Widevine L1 (hardware-backed) DRM requirements — required for HD streaming on Netflix, Disney+, etc. The 80% missing it are mostly older devices, budget devices, or devices where the OEM didn't pay for Widevine certification. If your app does paid video streaming, you have to handle the Widevine-not-available case explicitly.
Qualcomm RIL hook at 15.8%. This is a fingerprint for "this device has a Qualcomm modem." It correlates with Snapdragon-chipset share but is slightly higher because some MediaTek-CPU devices use a Qualcomm-modem add-on chip.
SIM-card secure element at 15.9%. This is what enables SIM-based authentication for things like banking apps and government IDs that want hardware-backed credential storage. Concentrated in flagship Samsung, Pixel, and a few enterprise phones. Mostly absent from budget devices.
Why this matters
If you're a developer:
- Don't assume any GMS library is present. Use
GoogleApiAvailability.isGooglePlayServicesAvailable()and have a fallback path. - Don't assume Widevine is present if you're serving video streaming. Check, and downgrade resolution / show appropriate error.
- Test your app on at least one non-GMS device if you serve any market where Huawei or Chinese-market phones are common (Russia, China, India, parts of MENA).
If you're a buyer:
- Check Widevine support if you stream Netflix or Disney+ in HD. Sites like dummyvar.com or just Netflix's "Video Quality" settings will show if your phone is L1 (hardware DRM, HD eligible) or L3 (software DRM, SD only).
- Check that the phone has GMS if you're buying outside the US/EU. Some imported phones in those markets don't.
The system library list is invisible to most users. It's also the single most consequential thing about whether a given app will run on a given Android phone. The catalog data lets you check it before you buy.
— Marcus