Check orientation on Android phone

Question

How can I check if the Android phone is in Landscape or Portrait?

Answer 1

If you use getResources().getConfiguration().orientation on some devices you will get it wrong. We used that approach initially in http://apphance.com. Thanks to remote logging of Apphance we could see it on different devices and we saw that fragmentation plays its role here. I saw weird cases: for example alternating portrait and square(?!) on HTC Desire HD:

CONDITION[17:37:10.345] screen: rotation: 270 orientation: square
CONDITION[17:37:12.774] screen: rotation: 0 orientation: portrait
CONDITION[17:37:15.898] screen: rotation: 90
CONDITION[17:37:21.451] screen: rotation: 0
CONDITION[17:38:42.120] screen: rotation: 270 orientation: square

or not changing orientation at all:

CONDITION[11:34:41.134] screen: rotation: 0
CONDITION[11:35:04.533] screen: rotation: 90
CONDITION[11:35:06.312] screen: rotation: 0
CONDITION[11:35:07.938] screen: rotation: 90
CONDITION[11:35:09.336] screen: rotation: 0

On the other hand, width() and height() is always correct (it is used by window manager, so it should better be). I'd say the best idea is to do the width/height checking ALWAYS. If you think about a moment, this is exactly what you want - to know if width is smaller than height (portrait), the opposite (landscape) or if they are the same (square).

Then it comes down to this simple code:

public int getScreenOrientation()
{
    Display getOrient = getWindowManager().getDefaultDisplay();
    int orientation = Configuration.ORIENTATION_UNDEFINED;
    if(getOrient.getWidth()==getOrient.getHeight()){
        orientation = Configuration.ORIENTATION_SQUARE;
    } else{ 
        if(getOrient.getWidth() < getOrient.getHeight()){
            orientation = Configuration.ORIENTATION_PORTRAIT;
        }else { 
             orientation = Configuration.ORIENTATION_LANDSCAPE;
        }
    }
    return orientation;
}