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I have a website with a full browser and jQuery Mobile interface and users can switch between the two. Their preference is stored in a cookie. By default the site serves the full version to visitors whitout a preference cookie, but to make it better for modern smartphone users I want their default to be JQM. So, I have this code in the constructor of my base controller class:

class BaseController { protected $mobile; // must be 0 or 1, cookies can't handle boolean 'false' public function __construct() { if (isset($_COOKIE['mobile'])) { $this->mobile = $_COOKIE['mobile']; } else { $this->mobile = $this->isSmartphoneWithCookies(); setcookie("mobile", $this->mobile, time() + 7776000, '/', ''); // 90 days } } private function isSmartphoneWithCookies() { $SMARTPHONE_WITH_COOKIES = "android.+mobile|blackberry|ip(hone|od)|opera m(ob|in)i"; return preg_match("/$SMARTPHONE_WITH_COOKIES/i", $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']) ? 1 : 0; } // the rest of my controller class.... }

Here I prefer speed to accuracy, so I am not looking for a slower, up-to-date lookup service as suggested here: Simple Smart Phone detection

Just a quick indication that the visitor has one of the current top smartphone/tablet browsers that support cookies and JQM.

Can someone suggest an improvement for my $SMARTPHONE_WITH_COOKIES? Or point me to a collection of UA signatures that fit my use case? Specifically, is it safe to have blackberry in the list? Am I overlooking a popular capable browser?

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Although not all mobile browsers in the list below supports cookies, having the list of UA strings for mobile devices can be useful (this list from from Django App mini detector): http://minidetector.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/minidetector/search_strings.txt

Important to note this list does not include Nokia tablets - see here why

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Thanks Eugene. That is one piece of the puzzle, but quite a lot of pieces to go before my function works.
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Personally, I wouldn't want to rely on maintaining a string of user agents. New devices are popuping up like nobody's business, and I've even had a user-agent name change on me and screw up my detection process (Kindle Fire's Silk browser).

An alternative approach is to test for device capabilities. The WURFL database is a good starting point. Despite some recent licensing changes that prohibit derivative works, they still have a public repository that you can download and use on your site.

Below are some capabilities that would be useful for testing an A-Grade device:

$requestingDevice = $wurflManager->getDeviceForHttpRequest($_SERVER); $is_wireless = ($requestingDevice->getCapability('is_wireless_device') == 'true'); $is_tablet = ($requestingDevice->getCapability('is_tablet') == 'true'); $is_mobile_device = ($iswireless || $istablet); $supports_cookies = ($requestingDevice->getCapability('cookie_support') == 'true'); $supports_web = ($requestingDevice->getCapability('device_claims_web_support') == 'true'); $supports_javascript = ($requestingDevice->getCapability('ajax_support_javascript') == 'true'); $supports_ajax = ($requestingDevice->getCapability('ajax_xhr_type') != 'none'); $supports_css3 = ($requestingDevice->getCapability('css_rounded_corners') == 'css3');
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Thank you for your advice, Derek. I did consider WURFL before, but decided that it was overkill for my use case. +1 for sharing your experience of a changing UA string. I never realised that was possible!
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By design, the primary UI selector for my app is the user. I do not want to delegate that to a detection script. The bit of detection in question is just to give a clever default. It is a risky feature, because a false positive (for example a smartphone without cookie support) can make my site totally inaccessible to some users. So if it fails, it needs to fail towards the standard interface.

For what it's worth, I considered the following:

  • Opera Mini doesn't have good enough javascript support for my JQM app.
  • Opera Mobile running on Android is a major category that I would have loved to catch, but I am not confident enough that I can correctly pick all of that out of the UA string.
  • I considered "windows phone os 7", but decided it will date too quickly
  • The subset of Blackberry browsers that qualify is also too tricky to detect simply, so rather than risk a false positive, I decided to drop the whole tier.

So, what I am left with is:

$SMARTPHONE_WITH_COOKIES = "android.+mobile|iphone|ipod";

The cost of keeping it this light and simple is that I will have to reconsider this question again every two years or so. I will also have many mobile visitors that will need to do an extra click to get the mobile version.

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