How do detect Android Tablets in general Useragent

Question

I have looked everywhere  We are using a Motorola Zoom to try our tablet site testing  The issue is that the Android Useragent is a general Useragent and there is no difference between tablet Android and mobile Android   I don t want to just target a specific device like the Xoom Useragent since Android will most likely be on multiple tablet devices in the near future   We are using Umbraco CMS  and we have looked at using the 51Degrees mobi solution  and at this moment this will not work for our needs   Maybe in the future  I know 51Degrees and some of the people at Umbraco are going to be doing some integration into Umbraco  but the final project will probably not be out for a couple of months  Hence  why we would like to detect the Useragent String of an Android tablet and have it not direct to our mobile site like it currently is   If anyone knows how to detect and Android Tablet in general  not the specific device would be very helpful

User · Answer

Once I have detected Android in the user agent, this is how I differentiate between tablet and smartphone browsers (this is using Python, but is similarly simple for other programming languages):

if ("Android" in agent):
  if ("Mobile" in agent):
    deviceType = "Phone"
  else:
    deviceType = "Tablet"

UPDATED: to reflect use of Chrome on Android, as per comments below.

User · Answer

You can try this script out since you do not want to target the Xoom only  I don t have a Xoom  but should work   function mobile detect mobile tablet mobile redirect tablet redirect debug    var ismobile     iphone ipod android blackberry opera mini windows sce palm smartphone iemobile i test navigator userAgent toLowerCase      var istablet     ipad android android 3 0 xoom sch-i800 playbook tablet kindle i test navigator userAgent toLowerCase       if  debug    true        alert navigator userAgent      if  ismobile  amp  amp  mobile  true        if  debug    true            alert  Mobile Browser              window location   mobile redirect    else if  istablet  amp  amp  tablet  true        if  debug    true            alert  Tablet Browser              window location   tablet redirect        I created a project on github  Check it out - https   github com codefuze js-mobile-tablet-redirect  Feel free to submit issues if there is anything wrong

User · Answer

While we can t say if some tablets omit  mobile   many including the Samsung Galaxy Tab do have mobile in their user-agent  making it impossible to detect between an android tablet and android phone without resorting to checking model specifics  This IMHO is a waste of time unless you plan on updating and expanding your device list on a monthly basis   Unfortunately the best solution here is to complain to Google about this and get them to fix Chrome for Android so it adds some text to identify between a mobile device and a tablet   Hell even a single letter M OR T in a specific place in the string would be enough  but I guess that makes too much sense

User · Answer

While Mobile Android may have  mobile  in it s user-agent string  what if it s using Opera Mobile for Android on a Tablet  It ll still have  mobile  in it s user-agent string  but should be displaying Tablet-sized sites  You ll need to test for  mobile  that is not preceded by  opera  rather than just  mobile   or you could just forget about Opera Mobile

User · Answer

Mo    better to also detect    mobile    user-agent     While you may still want to detect    android    in the User-Agent to   implement Android-specific features  such as touch-screen   optimizations  our main message is  Should your mobile site depends on   UA sniffing  please detect the strings    mobile    and    android     rather   than just    android     in the User-Agent  This helps properly serve both   your mobile and tablet visitors    Detecting Android device via Browser    lt  script language  javascript  gt   lt  --      var mobile     iphone ipad ipod android blackberry mini windows sce palm i test navigator userAgent toLowerCase                    if  mobile                      alert  MOBILE DEVICE DETECTED                      document write   lt b gt ---------------------------------------- lt br gt                      document write   lt b gt     navigator userAgent     lt br gt                      document write   lt b gt ---------------------------------------- lt br gt                      var userAgent   navigator userAgent toLowerCase                      if   userAgent search  android    gt  -1   amp  amp   userAgent search  mobile    gt  -1                            document write   lt b gt  ANDROID MOBILE  lt br gt                       else if   userAgent search  android    gt  -1   amp  amp    userAgent search  mobile    gt  -1                          document write   lt b gt  ANDROID TABLET  lt br gt                                  else                   alert  NO MOBILE DEVICE DETECTED      -- gt   lt  script gt

User · Answer

Xoom has the word Xoom in the user-agent   Mozilla 5 0  Linux  U  Android 3 0 1  en-us  Xoom Build HRI66  AppleWebKit 534 13  KHTML  like Gecko  Version 4 0 Safari 534 13  Galaxy Tab has  Mobile  in the user-agent   Mozilla 5 0  Linux  U  Android 2 2  en-us  SCH-I800 Build FROYO  AppleWebKit 533 1  KHTML  like Gecko  Version 4 0 Mobile Safari 533 1  So  it s easy to detect the Xoom  hard to detect if a specific Android version is mobile or not

User · Answer

Most modern tablets run honeycomb aka 3 x  No phones run 3 x by default  Most tablets that currently run 2 x have less capacity and might be better of when presented with a mobile site anyway  I know it  s not flawless   but I guess it  s a lot more accurate than the absence of mobile

User · Answer

If you use the absence of  Mobile  then its almost correct   But there are HTC Sensation 4G  4 3 inch with android 2 X  which does not send Mobile keyword   The reason why you may want to treat it separately is due to iframes etc

User · Answer

Carlos   In his article Tim Bray recommends this  as does another post by Google   but unfortunately it is not being applied by all tablet manufacturers          We recommend that manufactures of large-form-factor devices remove  Mobile  from the User Agent      Most Android tablet user-agent strings I ve seen use mobile safari  e g  the Samsung Galaxy Tab      Mozilla 5 0  Linux  U  Android 2 2  en-us  SCH-I800 Build FROYO  AppleWebKit 533 1  KHTML  like Gecko  Version 4 0 Mobile Safari 533 1   So at the moment I am checking on device names to detect Android tablets  As long as there are just a few models on the market  that s ok but soon this will be an ugly solution   At least in case of the XOOM  the mobile part seems to be gone      Mozilla 5 0  Linux  U  Android 3 0  en-us  Xoom Build HRI39  AppleWebKit 534 13  KHTML  like Gecko  Version 4 0 Safari 534 13   But as there are currently only tablets with Andorid 3 x  checking on Android 3 would be enough

User · Answer

The issue is that the Android User-Agent is a general User-Agent and there is no difference between tablet Android and mobile Android    This is incorrect  Mobile Android has  Mobile  string in the User-Agent header  Tablet Android does not   But it is worth mentioning that there are quite a few tablets that report  Mobile  Safari in the userAgent and the latter is not the only solid way to differentiate between Mobile and Tablet

User · Answer

I would recommend using Categorizr to detect if the user is on a tablet  You can view categorizr test results here

User · Answer

Here is what I use   public static boolean onTablet             int intScreenSize   getResources   getConfiguration   screenLayout  amp  Configuration SCREENLAYOUT SIZE MASK       return  intScreenSize    Configuration SCREENLAYOUT SIZE LARGE     LARGE         intScreenSize    Configuration SCREENLAYOUT SIZE LARGE   1      Configuration SCREENLAYOUT SIZE XLARGE

User · Answer

Try OpenDDR  it is free unlike most other solutions mentioned

User · Answer

Based on Agents strings on this site     http   www webapps-online com online-tools user-agent-strings   This results came up  First        All Tablet Devices have    1  Tablet   2  iPad   Second         All Phone Devices have    1  Mobile   2  Phone   Third         Tablet and Phone Devices have    1  Android     If you can detect level by level  I thing the result is 90 percent true  Like SharePoint Device Channels

User · Answer

The 51Degrees beta  1 0 1 6 and the latest stable release 1 0 2 2  4 28 2011  now have the ability to sniff for tablet  Basically along the lines of   string capability   Request Browser  is tablet      Hope this helps you

[android] How do detect Android Tablets in general. Useragent?

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