Over the past 24 hours, a [couple](https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/y2gsb0/pixel_7_cant_install_apks_from_external_sources/) of [users](https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/y2gej5/bunch_of_apps_not_compatible_with_my_pixel_7_pro/) on /r/GooglePixel have noted that they’re unable to sideload certain applications. [One user](https://twitter.com/PlayGloriaMMXIX/status/1580562551049695238) pinged me on Twitter about this, so I got a friend with a Pixel 7 Pro ([Adam Conway](https://twitter.com/AdamConwayIE)) to see if he could install Flappy Bird.
Flappy Bird is a very old 32-bit game, and an APK is available for it on APKMirror, so it’s a perfect test. When you try to install it on the Pixel 7, Android tells you the app “isn’t compatible with your phone”. The same thing happens when you [manually compile](https://twitter.com/flawedworlddev/status/1562547006194589696) a 64-bit only build of Android for a Pixel 6, so I assumed that Google had shipped a 64-bit only build of Android 13 on the Pixel 7. After checking the factory images, though, it’s clear that the Pixel 7 still ships with 32-bit system libraries, but perhaps it was compiled with a 64bo zygote so 32-bit apps won’t run.
If you run ‘getprop | grep abi’ in shell on the Pixel 7, you’ll see that only ‘arm64-v8a’ is reported and not ‘armeabi-v7a’ or ‘armeabi’ like on the Pixel 6.
[ro.product.cpu.abi]: [arm64-v8a]
[ro.product.cpu.abilist]: [arm64-v8a]
[ro.product.cpu.abilist32]: []
[ro.product.cpu.abilist64]: [arm64-v8a]
[ro.vendor.product.cpu.abilist]: [arm64-v8a]
[ro.vendor.product.cpu.abilist32]: []
[ro.vendor.product.cpu.abilist64]: [arm64-v8a]
This is quite an interesting development. As far as I know, this makes the Pixel 7 the first Android phone to ship without 32-bit app support enabled. The CPU cores in the Tensor G2 (2x Cortex-X1, 2x Cortex-A78, 4x Cortex-A55) all support AArch32 execution mode, so Google could’ve enabled 32-bit app support but chose not to.
If you want to know what the benefits of 64-bit only Android are, I [wrote about them here.](https://blog.esper.io/android-dessert-bites-3-road-to-64-bit-3123759/) [There’s evidence](https://twitter.com/MishaalRahman/status/1559666514982232069) the upcoming Pixel Tablet will ship with a 64-bit only build of Android. Don’t know if that’ll happen or not. There’s also evidence that [Google might require](https://blog.esper.io/android-14-deep-dive/) devices launching with Android 14 that have Armv9 CPUs to ship with 64-bit only Android. That might get pushed back, though.
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**Edit 1**: a couple of more details
The Pixel 7’s running a 64-bit only Zygote (Zygote is the system process that all app processes are forked from). The output of ‘getprop ro.zygote’ returns ‘zygote64’ on the Pixel 7 as opposed to on the Pixel 6 where it returns ‘zygote64_32’. Thanks to @anirudh109 on Telegram for checking this.