How to detect between mobile & tablets in PHP

Question

I read on this thread: Simplest way to detect a mobile device on how to know if the browser is a mobile device. the general code is this:

<?php include("Mobile_Detect.php"); include("demoData.php");
$detectIsMobile = new Mobile_Detect(); ?>

The problem is that I want to treat tablets (iPad & xoom).

I saw there that there is a isIpad() function that I have tested yet - but that still doesn't solve the difference between tablets and mobile phones.

Any idea?

thanks, Alon

Answer 1

Use

<?php
    if($detect->isTablet()){
        // any tablet
    }
?>

You can refer this page for more info http://code.google.com/p/php-mobile-detect/

Answer 2

The only way to do this is with a huge lookup table of User-Agent: strings.

get_browser() would probably be able to do what you want, but you would need to make sure that you keep the browscap file very up to date - new tablet models are being released on a weekly basis.

Alternatively there may some Javascript way to do it (although I don't know what that might be) but

• you would still have to keep a very large lookup table updated
• you should never rely on Javascript for any kind of functionality.

Answer 3

$detect = new Mobile_Detect; 
$deviceType = ( $detect->isMobile() ? ($detect->isTablet() ? 'tablet' : 'phone') : 'computer');
echo $deviceType;