TFLite Inference Fails on Android: 5 ONNX Mobile Fixes

#onnxruntime #tensorflowlite #androidml #edgeai

The Problem Everyone Hits After Successfully Exporting to TFLite

Your TensorFlow model exports to TFLite without errors. The conversion script runs clean. Then you deploy to Android and get IllegalArgumentException: Cannot copy to a TensorFlowLite tensor or the app just crashes with a cryptic JNI error.

I've seen this pattern repeat across three production deployments: the model works perfectly in Python, passes TFLite validation, then fails spectacularly on actual devices. The issue isn't your model architecture — it's the mismatch between what TFLite expects and what mobile runtimes actually support.

ONNX Runtime Mobile solves most of these problems by design, but the migration isn't obvious. Here are the five fixes that actually work, with before/after code and the specific error messages they eliminate.