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Android is ‘mostly’ free and open source Operating System for mobile devices. Android was created by Google and later, the Open Handset Alliance.

Being Java-based it can be used on a wide variety of mobile devices and it’s approach to code libraries gives it unprecedented degrees of configurability and expandability.

Android power’s Google’s first phone; the Google G1. Here are two user-agent strings for the Safari based web browser on Android OS:

We see from it’s user agent that Android uses a Linux kernel and an AppleWebKit based browser. Version 0.5 of Android (spotted Sept 08) was very lighweight if it was only packing AppleWebKit 522 like Safari 419! Obviously a light-weight beta.

The user agent for Version 1.0 of Android (spotted Nov 08) shows it to be much more upto date with Mobile Safari, something I’ve seen Apple making use on the iPhone in the last few months.

Leyton Jay Internet Stuff, User Agents google android, google g1, mobile safari, user agent

Here’s the User Agent String for Google’s brand spanking new browser; Chrome.

This user agent is for Chrome Beta on Windows Vista.

As we can see from Chrome’s User Agent, Chrome is based on AppleWebKit; Apple’s popular Open Source Browser engine.

Chrome uses the recently released version 525 of AppleWebKit.

Try Chrome for yourself - Download Google Chrome

Leyton Jay Internet Stuff, User Agents chrome, user agent

Here are some User Agent Strings for Apple’s 2nd Generation iPhone (OS 2_0 like Mac OS X).

In this user agent we see that the 2nd Generation iPhone OS is identified (OS 2_0); if it’s branded as a different version, significant changes to the OS must’ve been made.

The browser version is now 525 of AppleWebKit; Apple’s popular Open Source Browser engine also heavily used by Nokia. 1st generation iPhones used AppleWebKit/Safari 419.

I dont quite understand this next iPhone user agent, very similar to the first but from the iPod application/component of the iPhone. Perhaps a streaming application, though I have nothing streaming from my site. Weird. Also identifies itself specifically as Safari.

This next version seems to be a slightly later version of iPhone OS (OS 2_0_2 like Mac OS X) but has the same AppleWebKit and Safari version 525.

I get lots of visits to my blog from people looking for user agent information. So, what do you guys use this info for?

You can’t all just be geeky and curious like me, can you?

Leyton Jay Internet Stuff, User Agents iphone, safari, user agent