Cordova Android Application in Play Store, Does Not Support Tablet

Hello,

Wish you all a very Happy New Year, This is my first blog of 2014.

Recently we faced a strange issue with our Corodva Application. We built Sencha Touch application and used Cordova as native wrapper. When we uploaded APK to Google Play store, there was a notification that, application does not support tablets.

We were not sure what could be the issue, as we did not specify anything like this in application. First we thought it's a issue related to layouts, as some tablets may have high definition resolution. So we added all the layout files like ldpi, mdpi, hdpi and xhdpi. But still issue was the same. Later on we figured out that, this issue was actually related to permissions mentioned in Android manifest file. Normally when we create phoengap application for android, we specify following permissions.

<supports-screens android:largeScreens="true" android:normalScreens="true" android:smallScreens="true" android:resizeable="true" android:anyDensity="true" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.CAMERA" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.VIBRATE" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_LOCATION_EXTRA_COMMANDS" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_PHONE_STATE" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.RECEIVE_SMS" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.RECORD_AUDIO" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.MODIFY_AUDIO_SETTINGS" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_CONTACTS" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.WRITE_CONTACTS" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE" /> <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.GET_ACCOUNTS" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.BROADCAST_STICKY" />

If you see the above permission, we specified permission like RECEIVE_SMS, WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE, RECORD_AUDIO etc. IT may be possible that the tablet only allows Wifi connection and it does not have any sim card or external storage so it may not receive the SMS or record audio or write to external storage. But we requested the permission in manifest file and which was not possible to grant so the application can not work on tablets.

If you face the same issue try and remove the permissions which are not necessary and may not be available in some tablets. After removing permissions, upload APK to Play store and it will work.

Hope this helps you.