Unusual number of Android 10 sessions

[Weilin1]

Hi, 

Currently, i have notice an unusual amount of android 10 sessions. These sessions are usually web application sessions opened on a mobile using a chrome browser. 

After further read ups, i am aware that for web applications, Dynatrace uses the user agent string sent by the browser to distinguish user sessions of real users from synthetic and robots. It also leverages this string to identify operating systems and device types like desktop, tablet, or mobile.  

I also came across this article about Chrome's user‑agent reduction. In the article it states that "Starting in Chrome 110 (February 2023) we are gradually introducing a fixed value for Android version and device model—the default value will always be Android 10 on a model K". 

This leads to my suspicion that chrome's user-agent reduction might be the reason for unusual number of android 10 sessions. 

Does anyone else experience the same issue and if there is ways to counter it. Else would it be part of dynatrace's roadmap to fix this such that we get an accurate operation system. 

Thanks in advance!

[natanael_mendes]

i never heard about this but i dont think the Chrome agent is the cause. Dynatrace can identify real users and bot users. You can investigate de IP of this users. Tell me if i can help you in some way

[Weilin1]

Hi @natanael_mendes, 

I see, however our user sessions are indeed real users and not bot users. It is just surprising to see so many android 10 users using chrome mobile, since android 10 is considered an old version and the last security patch was feb 2023. Hence we were not expecting to see much android 10. 

On the contrasting note, Chrome mentioned in the article that " Starting in Chrome 110 we are gradually introducing a fixed value for Android version and device model. Instead of seeing something like Android 13 on Pixel 7 the default value will always be Android 10 on a model K. " seems to match better with my suspicion because chrome 110 is a relevantly new version that rolled out this year.  

[natanael_mendes]

Maybe some user start the session multiple times and this is causing the number of the android 10 sessions. Hope this help you. If you got any doubts feel free to ask

[Weilin1]

Managed to do more analysis on the data, they seems to be different users. 

From my finding i realised that:

This issue only affect users with browserFamily = Chrome browser.

For browserMajorVersion before Chrome Mobile 110, i am about to capture the different osVersion e.g. Android 10, 11, 12, 13.

However for browserMajorVersion from Chrome Mobile 110 onwards, osVersion are recorded mostly as Android 10. Though there are some outliers e.g, browserMajorVersion = Chrome Mobile 114 and osVersion = Android 11, however the ratio is like 1:100. 

As for device column they are null, maybe Dynatrace only capture device for mobile application. hence i am not able to verify if model K is being captured. 

Thanks.