Retrieving Android API version programmatically

Build.VERSION.RELEASE;

That will give you the actual numbers of your version; aka 2.3.3 or 2.2. The problem with using Build.VERSION.SDK_INT is if you have a rooted phone or custom rom, you could have a non standard OS (aka my android is running 2.3.5) and that will return a null when using Build.VERSION.SDK_INT so Build.VERSION.RELEASE will work no matter using standard Android version or not !

To use it, you could just do this;

String androidOS = Build.VERSION.RELEASE;

SDK.INT is supported for Android 1.6 and up

SDK is supported for all versions

So I do:

String sdk_version_number = android.os.Build.VERSION.SDK;

Credits to: CommonsWare over this answer

I generally prefer to add these codes in a function to get the Android version:

int whichAndroidVersion;

whichAndroidVersion= Build.VERSION.SDK_INT;
textView.setText("" + whichAndroidVersion); //If you don't use "" then app crashes.

For example, that code above will set the text into my textView as "29" now.

Like this:

String versionRelease = BuildConfig.VERSION_NAME;

versionRelease :- 2.1.17

Please make sure your import package is correct ( import package your_application_package_name, otherwise it will not work properly).