

Ask HN: Detecting prototype mobile browsers - ilamont

Considering all of the "Apple Tablet" rumors, I thought I would ask a question of the people who have experience working on new mobile devices, mobile software, or Web analytics:<p>When a new device is tested out for Web browsing, will the system specs show up in the traffic logs of the sites that are visited? If it is using a non-standard browser, OS, or screen size, will that be recorded? Can the specs be cloaked?<p>I am trying to determine if evidence of such a device (or any prototype mobile device) can be revealed by the tracks that it may leave ...
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TallGuyShort
It's really all in the User-Agent string, and maybe a few other headers. All
browsers have certain quirks that you could look for - but that wouldn't
necessarily give away anything secret. The User-Agent string can very easily
be cloaked however. Konqueror, for instance, let's you customize it by domain.

Furthermore, I doubt Apple would test it's product on the wide-open web very
much. I'm sure it has it's own internal network to test things on, and it's
own set of browser rendering tests.

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allenbrunson
actually, both the iphone 3g and 3gs were first spotted 'in the wild' by
people noticing unusual user-agent strings in their webserver logs. seems
uncharacteristic of apple, which is normally very secretive about unreleased
products, but it happened.

i can't find the right search terms to google up supporting evidence, but i
remember hearing about this in one of the apple sites i read: ars technica,
tauw, etc.

