Detect between a mobile browser or a PhoneGap application

You could check if the current URL contains http protocol.

var app = document.URL.indexOf( 'http://' ) === -1 && document.URL.indexOf( 'https://' ) === -1;
if ( app ) {
    // PhoneGap application
} else {
    // Web page
}

Quick solution comes to mind is,

onDeviceReady

shall help you. As this JS call is invoked only by the Native bridge (objC or Java), the safari mobile browser will fail to detect this. So your on device app(phone gap) source base will initiate from onDeviceReady.

And if any of the Phonegap's JS calls like Device.platform or Device.name is NaN or null then its obviously a mobile web call.

Please check and let me know the results.

I figured out a way to do this and not rely on deviceready events thus, keeping the web codebase intact...

The current problem with using the built in deviceready event, is that when the page is loaded, you have no way of telling the app: "Hey this is NOT running on an mobile device, there's no need to wait for the device to be ready to start".

1.- In the native portion of the code, for example for iOS, in MainViewController.m there's a method viewDidLoad, I am sending a javascript variable that I later check for in the web code, if that variable is around, I will wait to start the code for my page until everything is ready (for example, navigator geolocation)

Under MainViewController.m:

- (void) viewDidLoad
{
    [super viewDidLoad];
    NSString* jsString = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"isAppNative = true;"];
    [self.webView stringByEvaluatingJavaScriptFromString:jsString];
}

2.- index.html the code goes like this:

function onBodyLoad()
{
    document.addEventListener("deviceready", onDeviceReady, false);
}

function onDeviceReady(){;
    myApp.run();
}

try{
    if(isAppNative!=undefined);
}catch(err){
    $(document).ready(function(){
        myApp.run();
    });
}

PhoneGap has window.PhoneGap (or in Cordova, it's window.cordova or window.Cordova) object set. Check whether that object exists and do the magic.