51Degrees-Logo

No sign of cloud when we talk about mobile device detection

James Rosewell

4/24/2012 10:00 PM

Device Detection Performance Mobile PHP Opinion

The weather outside may be a typically damp British April - but here at 51Degrees.mobi there's not a cloud in the sky. We've developed a mobile device detection solution that doesn't rely on a ‘cloud' connection every time there's a new visitor to your mobile web site.

As far as we're concerned, cloud services are very well-suited to location-based services and other applications that require vast quantities of data. They're also often a practical solution when information needs to be shared but needs to be controlled or monitored as well.

However, mobile device detection is a completely different type of situation. To start with, the data involved is so small it would fit on an old-fashioned floppy disk!

That's why 51Degrees.mobi Device Detection is designed to work with a small data file installed on the same server used by the web site. Not only is it easy to set up, it also promises a much faster response than performing a cloud-based check whenever an online device visits the web site. You can detect a mobile visitor within milliseconds; much faster than a packet of data would travel to and from a cloud service.

Quite simply, cloud services don't make sense for this type of use from an engineering point of view - and that's why 51Degrees.mobi won't be offering cloud-based mobile device detection anytime soon. The future is bright... and cloudless!

51Degrees.mobi has recently introduced a new service to help mobile developers identify browser capabilities on web servers using PHP. The new 51Degrees.mobi for PHP solution is entirely self-contained and can be implemented within three minutes. It's being released as a beta with plug-ins available for WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and CodeIgniter. Additional availability is planned for the future.

Developers can download the 51Degrees.mobi PHP beta from open-source software project sourceforge.net.