Question

Is there a way for the Android Manifest to be different depending on screen size? I want android:configChanges to not include “orientation” if the device is a tablet (ie xlarge screen size)

Moreover, I want android:screenOrientation to be different depending on which device is used. Any advice?

Answer 1

I know of no way to do something that complex in AndroidManifest.xml, however you can do it programmatically via Activity.setRequestedOrientation() method. It’s easy enough to wrap this in a utility class and then query your environment accordingly. One word of warning though – if calling this method does actually result in an orientation change, your Activity’s onCreate() will be called a second time. Another thing that might come in handy if you choose to go this route, if the following evaluates to true:

if((cfg.screenLayout & Configuration.SCREENLAYOUT_SIZE_MASK) == Configuration.SCREENLAYOUT_SIZE_LARGE) {...}

Then you are on a tablet device, or at least your layouts are being loaded from layout-large (if you have one). Puting it all together, the following would lock a tablet into landscape mode and phones into portrait mode:

      if ((cfg.screenLayout & Configuration.SCREENLAYOUT_SIZE_MASK) == Configuration.SCREENLAYOUT_SIZE_LARGE) {
         return true;
      } else if ((cfg.screenLayout & Configuration.SCREENLAYOUT_SIZE_MASK) == Configuration.SCREENLAYOUT_SIZE_NORMAL) {
         return false;
      } else if ((cfg.screenLayout & Configuration.SCREENLAYOUT_SIZE_MASK) == Configuration.SCREENLAYOUT_SIZE_SMALL) {
         return false;
      } else {
         // Assume that all other ratings are tablets or possibly even larger devices; there is an
         // extra large spec however it is only available OS versions 3.x and above so there is no clean way to query for this state.
         return true;
      }