Sometimes I get really annoyed when I try to visit a website using the built in Android browser only to be redirected to the “mobile” version of that website with no option to visit the full version site. A good example of this is the National rail website.
Some websites however handle this better by giving the option of using the full version of a site instead of the mobile version via a link at the bottom of the page. A good example is the mobile wikipedia site.
Most websites use the browser’s user-agent string to decided whether to show the full site or the mobile site. The built in Android browser doesn’t normally give the option to change the user-agent string but you can by doing the following:
- Start up the built in Android browser on your phone.
- Type about:debug into the url box and press “GO” button.
- Nothing will appeared to have happened, however if you press your menu key on your phone and go into settings then new options will be available.
- Find the UAString option (right at the end of the list) and change it to Desktop.
- You can now browse the internet like a “desktop” machine.
Note this change isn’t permanent so you will need to perform these steps again sometimes.
The Dolphin browser available from the Android market place has the option to change the user-agent string permanently but I’m not such a huge fan of Dolphin as it’s a bit sluggish.
I’ve included a few screenshots which can been seen below.
The full version of the National Rail site