Google Analytics, Ensighten and other analytics tools.

[original PM]

Does anyone know how web analysis tools tell whether a user is on a tablet, smartphone or desktop when they produce their analytics?

Does it actually detect the device type or is it looking at browser type/os?

[Brummie]

Does anyone know how web analysis tools tell whether a user is on a tablet, smartphone or desktop when they produce their analytics?

Does it actually detect the device type or is it looking at browser type/os?

Getting screen size is one of the quickest ways to identify the device being used (it would be a very broad classification though).

[original PM]

Getting screen size is one of the quickest ways to identify the device being used (it would be a very broad classification though).

Yeah that is one thing we were looking at.

One of the problems is we have tablet devices but they just use them to access a virtual desktop running on windows server 2008.

we are trying to see who is using the tablet and who is using the 'desktop thin client' but I think because they are accessing a virtual desktop on both devices it appears that the analytics tools cannot tell which physical device they are on.

but maybe not..

[xoggoth]

Presumably the same methods that a website can use to see who is browsing. How it works I've no idea but the PHP code in Mobile_Detect has a long list of mobile devices, phones and tablets, by make and model as well as a list of browsers.

Mobile Detect - lightweight PHP class for detecting mobile devices (including tablets)