Issues with Android Enterprise Devices

In the recent weeks, we have observed some issues that are affecting some Android Enterprise Devices and management modes. All these issues have been acknowledged by Android Enterprise and/or OEMs with either resolutions or workarounds. The below article summarizes the issues and documents the workarounds or the resolutions.

Issue 1: Android OS 10 Devices boot failure.

Issue Description:

There are reports of some Android 10 devices failing to boot and entering Rescue/Recovery mode, if present on device. This normally is happening, after enrolling the device to a MDM solution some devices fail to reboot or present a rescue/recovery mode screen as shown below.

Impacted Devices:

No specific list is available; however, it generally impacts devices running Android 10.

Root Cause:

This bug normally appears when a system app is uninstalled or when uninstalling the updates to the system apps the process is interrupted. This often creates a race condition, causing the device to boot into recovery/rescue mode.

This issue was fixed in November 2019 and rolled out as a patch to the devices, however if the devices are not yet updated or don’t have an update the issue may still occur.

Reason for Reoccurrence

We have seen that devices that did receive an earlier update to fix the root cause mentioned above are again exhibiting this behavior.

This can be attributed to the fix done by Android for another recent bug that prevented Google Play Store from being updated. To fix the Google Play Store bug, there were some changes done to uninstall the updates to the Play Store, restoring it to the system version and once the devices receive these changes, it triggers the root cause mentioned above.

Mitigation Plans

1. Android has stopped rolling out the update that uninstalls the update to the Play Store, so as to prevent devices from being going into recover/rescue mode.

2. Scalefusion recommends not to use Remote Commands or App uninstallation features, that uninstall System apps.

Resolution/Restoring Impacted Devices

1. The OEM (device manufacturers) have been advised to apply the fix for the root cause and roll out the patches to their target devices. However, this may take some time as it is upto the OEM on when they can rollout the fix.

2. Alternatively, customers are also advised to update to Android 11 on devices where an upgrade is available.

3. For the devices that are in the rescue/recovery mode, the solution would be to reset the device and re-enroll them.

   1. Post enrollment it is advised to update to latest OS updates as available on the device.

Issue 2: Zero-Touch not Working on Samsung Android 14

Issue Description

You might encounter an issue where you’re unable to enroll Samsung Galaxy devices running Android 14 through zero-touch enrollment.

Impacted Devices

Root Cause

Google has identified an issue with the Google Play Service (GmsCore) app v23.34.14. This version is included in the Android 14 release for select Galaxy devices.

Mitigation Plan

None is available so far.

Resolution

Samsung is working towards releasing a new binary that contains the updated Google Play Services that fixes the issue.

Please refer to: https://docs.samsungknox.com/admin/knox-platform-for-enterprise/kbas/kba-1120-unable-to-enroll-device-with-zero-touch-enrollment/ for more information.

We can understand if you have more questions or need further clarity. Please feel free to reach out to support@scalefusion.com with your questions and we will be glad to help out.