Understanding Mobile Device Detection

Here's a simplistic description of the detection process: When a user browses to a website, the browser and the server have a conversation. At the beginning of the conversation, the browser (or sometimes the handheld itself, depending on how the device handles this function) introduces itself to the server with a string known as the user agent, as discussed in Chapter 5; at that point, when the browser says says hello to the server, technically, the server has detected the device type. It knows most or all of the following information: what operating system (OS) and OS version the device is using; the type and version of the browser the device is using; the device type and type (bios) version; and which supported extensions, such as WebKit (discussed in Chapter 12), if applicable.