There is a little hostname file that can be edited, but has to be done with sudo to make it save and stick. Those who can use any good search engine will find for instance this: http://askubuntu.com/questions/87665/how-do-i...ostname-without-a-restart . The host and agent needs to restart and then communicate with wcg to let it know about the name change. This will -not- create a new device registration

Basically I have two android devices, the second hasn't come through on the devices page yet (first results sent in a few hours ago) but my nexus 7 is just down as 'android'.

looking at the results page I can see the two distinct android devices, and both are down as 'android' followed by the unique code, so I'm anticipating the device name for both will be 'android' as the common beginning of the device name.

That's an issue that applies to hosts of all flavors with WCG, which has no means to merge hosts.

That's not the point. I've installed NativeBoinc on my Samsung Galaxy S4 that is definitely not rooted and I'm able to change the device name. Same on the not rooted minix neo.

In NativeBoinc choose menu --> native client. In the network options area the first option is for setting the device name. I only have the german version and there it is called "Rechnername festlegen". Should be something like "Set Hostname" or "Set Devicename" or "Devicename setting" or ...