Windows Phone 6.5 not recogized by .NET as Mobile Device

MrSmoofy

15y2.6k.NET

I have an application that acts differently based on Request.Browser.IsMobileDevice

So far all the devices that use are application have been older windows mobile devices (5 and earlier)

We have a new devices that has Windows Mobile 6 and the user agent for the browser shows up as:

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; Windows Phone 6.5)

But the Request.Browser.IsMobileDevice is always false.

I found an article about a WM6Plus.browser file which I tried putting in the framework folder and registering it with the util and also tried adding it to the application to App_Browsers but neither has helped.

This is with .NET 3.5 (2.0 Framework) that I'm trying to get this to work correctly.

3 Replies

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Vulpes15y ago
I imagine that it must have been this MSDN article (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc546461.aspx) where you learnt about the WM6Plus.browser file because I can't find anything else about it.

Possibly the file in question is not compatible with v6.5 even though it can cope with 6.0 or 6.1.

I just looked on my machine to see what .browser files I could find under the various versions of the .NET Framework.

Under v4.0, I found one called iemobile.browser which looks promising as it relates to v8.12 which I think is the version used by WP 6.5. Here's the contents if you want to try it:
MrSmoofy15y ago
Thanks for the reply but I don't consider a blog post that is 3 years old reliable.

I can assure you IsMobileDevice is infact reliable up until this point. I have not had any problem with any other Windows Mobile, Android, iPhone or any other mobile devices.

I'm sure the issue revolves around a proper .Browser file or updating the current .Browser files so that .NET correctly detects this user agent but I've not been able to the find that exact answer.
Vulpes15y ago
Judging by this blog (http://www.ytechie.com/2008/10/detecting-mobile-device-user-agents-in-aspnet.html) Request.Browser.IsMobileDevice is unreliable.

If you decide to go instead with the suggested method which uses Request.UserAgent, then I gather from one of the comments that you'll need to add this entry:

userAgent.Contains("windows phone")

to accomodate Windows Phone 6.5.