Cant get to play.google.com from webview on some devices. (“This browser no longer supported”)

Question

We have written a library that at some point gets a list of play.google.com app links. We have always opened these links in a webview as we dont want the user to leave the current app unless they absolutely have to.
On regression we have noticed that a few devices (Samsung s3 4.1.2 / Note2 4.3) when trying to open the links will now show the message: "This browser is no longer supported"
My guess is the store site is blocking based on user-agent or something (the same message gets shown if the link is opened in the internet and Chrome apps but not firefox). Other devices are working fine though with the webview going to the correct page.

Does anyone know the criteria or any other information about what is being blocked? We would like to know the scope of devices effected before making changes.

We can change our links to market links and open the play store app but links coming from 3rd party sources will still be urls. While we can pass those links to another app rather than a webview, if the user chooses chrome/internet it still wont work. And as mentioned before we don't want to leave the app unless we have to.

Appreciate any information or links on this subject.

Thanks

Answer 1

I think it's probably the user-agent set on the webview. Try changing it:

webview.getSettings().setUserAgentString("user-agent-string");

Here you can get a link of a bunch of user-agents:

http://www.useragentstring.com/pages/useragentstring.php