Android’s ‘Secret’ Phone Information Page to Get an Update
Here’s something you might not know: Entering a certain set of numbers and symbols into your Android phone’s dialer will reveal a “hidden” set of diagnostic data and information about your phone. Despite the feature’s obscurity, Google is apparently working on an update.
As Android Authority reports , when you open the Phone app on your Android device, type * # *#4636#*#*, and then dial a number, a hidden menu appears with three key submenus: Phone info, Usage stats, and Wi-Fi info. It’s worth noting that this information isn’t all that important to most smartphone users. In fact, according to Android Authority, most users who are familiar with the feature use it to lock their phones to a specific network type — like 3G, 4G, or 5G — to prevent the phone from switching between different networks.
While this code isn’t widely known (or useful) to Android owners, Google is still working on new improvements and features for it. If you’ve installed Android Canary on your phone — the software that gives users access to the earliest builds of future versions of Android — you’ll now see a fourth menu when you enter this code into the dialer: “Phone information V2.”
What’s changed in “Phone Information V2”
This appears to be a new version of the existing About Phone page. This menu is a series of data items on a single page, whereas in version 2 it was divided into four tabs: About Phone, Data & Network, Satellite, and IMS. Android Authority notes that while About Phone, Data & Network, and IMS all pull the same information from the About Phone page, just in a more organized fashion, Satellite is an entirely new version. This could be due to the expansion of satellite capabilities from carriers like T-Mobile — since phones can connect to satellites when cellular service is down, this information could be important for diagnosing problems with those connections.
My Android phone doesn’t have an active SIM card, so I can’t test this myself, but I think it’ll be useful for anyone who likes to dig into their phone’s data and diagnostics. Since it’s only available on the Canary channel for now, it’s unclear when this new menu will make it to the official build, or if it will change at all, or if it will change before the official release. Still, it’s interesting to see what Google is working on behind the scenes, especially since the feature is relatively hidden and little known.