Android: allow portrait and landscape for tablets, but force portrait on phone?

Question

I would like tablets to be able to display in portrait and landscape (sw600dp or greater), but phones to be restricted to portrait only. I can't find any way to conditionally choose an orientation. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Here's a good way using resources and size qualifiers.

Put this bool resource in res/values as bools.xml or whatever (file names don't matter here):

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
    <resources>
        <bool name="portrait_only">true</bool>
    </resources>

Put this one in res/values-sw600dp and res/values-xlarge:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
    <resources>
        <bool name="portrait_only">false</bool>
    </resources>

See this supplemental answer for help adding these directories and files in Android Studio.

Then, in the onCreate method of your Activities you can do this:

    if(getResources().getBoolean(R.bool.portrait_only)){
        setRequestedOrientation(ActivityInfo.SCREEN_ORIENTATION_PORTRAIT);
    }

Devices that are more than 600 dp in the smallest width direction, or x-large on pre-Android 3.2 devices (tablets, basically) will behave like normal, based on sensor and user-locked rotation, etc. Everything else (phones, pretty much) will be portrait only.