Google on an iPhone

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Google on an iPhone

Google's mobile sites look a little different on an iPhone. The iPhone versions don't have special URLs, as Google checks the user-agent to detect different devices. I changed my Firefox user-agent by typing about:config in the address bar and creating a new string value:

Name: general.useragent.override
Value: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A538a Safari/419

To go back the original value, you just have to right-click on the item and select "Reset".

While the iPhone versions usually have a better user interface, in some cases they also have more features (Mobile Google Docs lets you view presentations only on the iPhone). I wonder how they will look on a Google Phone.

Google's homepage

Google Calendar (compare it with the standard mobile version)

Google Docs (compare it with the standard mobile version)

Picasa Web (compare it with the standard mobile version)

Google Reader (compare it with the standard mobile version)

{ Thanks, Martin Porcheron. }

Labels: Mobile

11 comments ( Post a comment )

Philipp Lenssen said on October 18, 2007 4:15 AM PDT:

Can't you link "about:config" in your post?

Ionut Alex Chitu said on October 18, 2007 4:25 AM PDT:

That doesn't seem to work. I think it only works in Opera.

worlbit said on October 18, 2007 4:48 AM PDT:

I use the "User Agent Switcher"-Add-On for Firefox and a self created iPhone-Setting.

See attached.

You can switch from iPhone-View to any other custom view.

[The comment was edited because it linked to a page that contained malware. - Ionut]

coolxeo said on October 18, 2007 6:24 AM PDT:

Docs are read-only :(

worlbit said on October 18, 2007 7:05 AM PDT:

There is no malware behind, Ionut - just the screenshot with my working settings for this add-on:
h**p://www.bilder-hochladen.net/files/4e7d-1-jpg.html

BTW: the link you corrected is not working!

Ionut Alex Chitu said on October 18, 2007 12:43 PM PDT:

@worlbit:

The image loads fine here. The link you posted launches an annoying ad from partypocker.com that triggers a warning from my anti-virus.

I uploaded your image to ImageShack.

Anonymous said on October 18, 2007 2:46 PM PDT:

Any idea how to get it work with the iPod Touch? because I have not been able to get it to work. When I visit my gCalendar or gReader in the iPod's safari browser I get the full size pages instead of the "iPhone" versions.

Jean-Noël Anderruthy said on October 18, 2007 4:35 PM PDT:

Use the following bonus : http://iphonetester.com !

TQuizzle said on December 5, 2007 4:44 PM PDT:

Wish you could do this in Windows Mobile 5/6.
That would be really nice.

bobby1041 said on December 6, 2007 5:56 AM PDT:

"Wish you could do this in Windows Mobile 5/6. That would be really nice."
I completely agree!!!

Forgen said on December 6, 2007 10:35 AM PDT:

Good news and Bad news -

Good - I had the Google iPhone interfaces for GMail, Reader, and mobile hompeage working by changing the useragent in pocket internet explorer (PIE).

Bad - the new AJAXified version of the mobile homepage now loads a blank page in PIE :( :(. Now when I got directly to GMail or Reader, they have both reverted to their rather lame standard mobile versions!! I liked the big text and nicer look of the iPhone versions on my touch screen PPC phone.

Now - who can find if google mirrored their old iPhone interfaces to a new url so that we can still access it?

P.S. changing the useragent in PIE is done by using a registry editor

What do you think?