Detecting Mobile Devices

While exploring ways to detect for mobile devices, I ran across some useful sites:

·         HandsetDetection.com  is a (free) web service that offers the ability to detect which mobile devices are accessing your website.

·         Detecting Smartphones Using JavaScript

·         http://detectmobilebrowsers.mobi/ is a PHP script to detect mobile phones. (It’s $20 for commercial use, and free for private use).

·         There is also a great article at  “A List Apart” article that attempts to use CSS as the main way to detect mobile devices: “Return of the Mobile Style Sheet.” This is something to bookmark, as I think the technique will become more and more useful as more devices make use of implement CSS Media Queries.

·         List of User-Agents (Spiders, Robots, Browser)

Meanwhile, here are a few “quick and dirty” approaches:

JavaScript

if((navigator.userAgent.match(/iPhone/i)) || (navigator.userAgent.match(/iPod/i))) {
      document.write ("iPhone/iPod detected from JavaScript.")
}

Classic ASP

strUA = LCase(Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_USER_AGENT"))
If InStr(strUA, "iphone") Then
      response.write ("iPhone detected from ASP")
End If