ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Olivier Tilloy <olivier.tilloy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 9:12 AM, Vincent JOBARD <vinzjobard@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I think that comes because oxyde, the webbroser use an Android-Chrome
> user-agent.
>
> Cheers,
> Winael
>
>
> Le lun. 1 juin 2015 08:59, Gareth France <gareth.france@xxxxxxxxx> a écrit :
>>
>> I'm curious to know about how the world sees Ubuntu. I recently went to
>> check my emails using the gmail app only to find myself logged out. I didn't
>> think much of it and entered my details. It let me in but the result was an
>> email being sent to me containing the following:
>>
>> Hi Gareth,Your Google Account gareth.france@xxxxxxxxx was just used to
>> sign in on Android.
>>
>> So why does Google think Ubuntu is Android? Is this how the web as a whole
>> sees our phones? Is there not a way to report back a Linux or Ubuntu?


Hi Gareth, Vincent,

Aside from the minor confusion (oxide is the web rendering engine, not
the browser itself), this is mostly correct. The webbrowser
application advertises a user-agent string that contains an "Android"
token, which causes most websites and webapps to serve
android-specific content.
Without this trick, most websites and webapps would serve content that
is not adapted for mobile/touch.

See https://launchpad.net/bugs/1328183 for details about the rationale
for choosing such a UA string.

HTH,

 Olivier