Question

I have an app that looks good in either orientation on a large or xlarge screen size, but should be restricted to portrait on phones. I know that you can restrict the orientation of an Activity in the manifest, but is there a way to do so conditionally? Or is there some kind of property I can set in the activity itself to choose which orientations are supported?

Answer 1

This is the solution I use in my apps:

public void onCreate(Bundle savedState) {
    //...

    if(isScreenLarge()) {
        // width > height, better to use Landscape
        setRequestedOrientation(ActivityInfo.SCREEN_ORIENTATION_LANDSCAPE);
    } else {
        setRequestedOrientation(ActivityInfo.SCREEN_ORIENTATION_PORTRAIT);
    }
}

public boolean isScreenLarge() {
    final int screenSize = getResources().getConfiguration().screenLayout
            & Configuration.SCREENLAYOUT_SIZE_MASK;
    return screenSize == Configuration.SCREENLAYOUT_SIZE_LARGE
            || screenSize == Configuration.SCREENLAYOUT_SIZE_XLARGE;
}