One of the most common scenarios for using device channels is to identify the tablet and smartphone browsers. Applying a mobile-specific master page, when appropriate, can provide the users with a design that is more touch friendly and is laid out in a specific manner for smaller screens. In this recipe, we are going to create a device channel that will identify Android, iOS, BlackBerry, WebOS, and Windows mobile devices. There are hundreds of mobile-specific browsers that we can detect with the user agent. However, for this recipe we are going to keep it simple.
In order to view and modify the device channels for a SharePoint site, the SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure site collection feature and SharePoint Server Publishing site feature must be activated.