switching from honor/huawei to samsung … or the state of android usablitiy

in other words, switch from a non-google android to fully supported android, huawei is the parent company of honor, choose because it’s EMUI respectively MagicUI is quite close at iOS Usability, used a lot in the past years

• Honor 8 Pro
• Huawei Mate 10 pro
• Huawei P30 Pro
• Huawei Mate 20 Pro
• Honor P20 Pro

… but not it’s time to turn my back to Huawei/Honor, because:

• EMUI10 removed “Download” app
• Battery Optimisation is quite aggressive with required notifications
• tricky without google play services in the future
• integration into Windows 10 oder Android Enterprise, leaves space to improve

start the journey a new vendor – several years already owned a Samsung S6 edge (drowned without IP68 protection 😉 – finally choose Samsung S20

this is the second view of Samsungs Flagship smartphone, technical facts could be find else where, just want to focus on the handling

• download – huawei/honor removed it’s download app, also Samsung don’t offer per default a “download” app, but you could create several shortcuts in “My Files” App right to your homescreen *thumbsup*

• integration – Samsung expand strategic partnership with Microsoft, buildin “Link to Windows” it just connection to the Windows Your Phone App, available from PlayStore, Samsung Cloud is replaced with Microsoft OneDrive

• 5G – not required because on it’s way but yet not usable
• battery – with 4000 mAh, always running low in the early afternoon, “battery optimization” is more strict at Honor/Huawei, but seams to be more effective then generally reduce overall system performance at Samsung
• max power saving – in worst case there is an option to disable all smart features and leaves just a few app to enhance battery life for basic tasks, camera, telephone – at EMUI it was also possible to select from all installed apps, while Samsung offers just a predefined set (e.g. without brave browser, no telegram but whatsapp!?)

• 

• 

• multi screen – Samsung offers with it’s build in dex mode an easy way to enhange working from a mobile device attached to a large screen, Honor and Huawei as well, there also other options around

second screen – how to multi screen | updated

let’s check how to use display content at a second screen to raise productivity, there are several options to enlarge your screen, the power of your mobile device is most of the time enough to serve multi screen windows project, duplicate, extend are availabe options when hit windows key + p to open up charms bar…

by matthias mader 8. October 201927. January 2020

• dual sim – always use two SIM cards for different coutry’s, both offer the ability to configure settings per sim – at Honor it is easier to jump into SIM-settings with a homescreen shortcut, not possible at Samsung – here is it easier to switch between SIM services from notifiation panel, not possible at honor

• quick search – swipe down to open device wide search for app, contacts or internet content, Honor/Huawei open search and parallel opens keyboard to start typing – same behaviour at iOS devices, the keyboard automatically launch – your guessing it, i’m missing auto-launch of the keyboard at Samsung’s launcher

• 

  Honor

• 

  iPhone

• 

  Samsung

apple’s introduced app libary in iOS14 sort all apps, but search needs to be initiated via an additional click, at Samsung it require’s me to use fastfinder app or another launcher

• unlock – i tested all unlock options available at the market, the dedicated fingerprint is the most reliable and fast option in 2020, inscreen fingerprint quite slow, faceunlock is useless in while wearing a mask or during night in the dark
• android enterprise – i’m a fan of the profile separation, what a pity that google wasn’t able to provide the same usablity for all vendors – page vs. folder

• 

  Honor – separate page

• 

  Samsong – Work folder

• send attachments – like the buildin option to reduce file size when sending an attachement via mail at iOS or EMUI, missed at Samsung

• 

  iOS

• 

  EMUI

… there are some other pro/con on both sides, this is just a kind of best pratice summary sofar

android bloatware in business

android device arrive with alot of preinstalled app like facebook, flipboard, skype and for sure google service (youtube,maps,gmail,etc.) – for private use this is anoying, but for business it is essential to secure the usecase

android enterprise

when enabling Android Enterprise for Kiosk/Company devices, during setup the default apps could be disabled with this switch – PROVISIONING_LEAVE_ALL_SYSTEM_APPS_ENABLED – Samsung offers this with it’s KNOX Mobile Enrollment and google with buildin zero-touch service

be aware that you loose the native camera app if your usecase require one

device management

after your device is enrolled in mobile device managment system (emm, uem or whatever) your able to restrict installed apps by package name, apps differ from device manufaturer and os level, package names also useful to arrange/allow in kiosk setup, for samsung XCover4s these are:

• com.samsung.android.messaging
• com.sec.android.app.samsungapps
• com.samsung.android.calendar
• com.samsung.android.email.provider
• com.sec.android.app.myfiles
• com.sec.android.gallery3d
• com.sec.android.app.clockpackage.clockpackage
• com.sec.android.app.clockpackage.alarm.alarmalert
• com.google.android.gm
• com.google.android.youtube
• com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox
• com.sec.android.app.fm
• com.google.android.apps.maps
• com.samsung.android.contacts
• com.samsung.android.dialer
• com.samsung.android.game.gamehome
• com.sec.factory.camera
• com.sec.android.app.camera
• com.sec.android.app.clockpackage
• com.sec.android.app.sbrowser
• com.microsoft.skydrive
• com.facebook.katana

adb tools

remove bloatware from a single device or find from from a reference device locally connected

1. install USB drivers for your device
2. download & install ADB tools
3. enable Developer Options & USB debugging
4. plug in your device into the computer
5. open a terminal and type: adb devices
6. will return the ID of your device
7. in adb shell with: adb shell
8. list all installed packages: pm list packages
9. to remove packages type: pm uninstall -k -user 0 <package name>

take care to not disable system critical apps of android, check here

android pie enterprise

announced device administrator deprecation pushing android enterprise futher to…

improving productivity, security, and digital wellbeing for the enterprise

key facts for enterprise are:

• better realisation (separation) of work profiles
• deaper support for single purpose devices
• advanced security

read more: enterprise features of android p

already rolling out android 9 to pixel devices, huawei mate 20 get it preinstalled, huawei is pushing hard in android enterprise recommenced, device running android oreo should get updates quicker as before because of google’s project treble

@google

proof: my huawei still got google august security update

android enterprise conspiracy

we are on the track of a long-planned conspiracy … android enterprise’s suitcase spotted in lego duplo, long before android was released or even google founded *shocked*

need more evidence? … the tea can from lego duplo set has the same color as the android!

unifying device management

samsung knox and android enterprise aligning with ongoing rollout of android oreo and knox 3.0 to samsung devices

this migration will harmonize the enterprise mobility framework on samsung devices by creating one set of api’s and data separation tools

preconfigure outlook

with it’s current release of microsoft outlook app for ios and android it is possible to preconfigure via enterprise mobility suite @microsoft

following values are suppoted for android, a step further for android enterprise to get rid of the “almost”

for ios refer to apple’s managed app configuration and it’s key value pairs

within windows10 there are some possiblities to preconfigure an email profile in outlook, even via emm

 read more: outlook supporting oauth, ios12 added exchange payload

other mircosoft office apps don’t support these functionality – graph api is the approach, any vendor can integrate with intune to use it as middleware to manage office apps – a powerful api with the intelligence in microsoft’s hands

 

 

android (almost) enterprise

…launched in 2015, renamed in 2017 from android for work and now it’s time for enterprises to adopt android’s modern device management

approach of google to manage devices, regardless of any vendor, to better integrate android in enterprise

device admin api’s started deprecating some features, emm system unable to reset device passcode for android 7.0 devices, google will deprecate further in android “p” release in 2018 and stop working with major release of android in 2019

not yet – tested a lot of android’s feature to get a markable footprint in enterprise, realized use cases to bring value for customers but unfortunately android enterprise can’t replace device admin, that’s why…

enrollment – apple’s devices can centralized ordered, prepared and assigned to an emm system via dep (device enrollment program) – google’s pendant zero touch enrollment is currently just available for android 8.1 and pixel devices – samsung got it’s own knox mobile enrollment (kme) which depends on the installed knox version and is for sure just available for samsung devices – a fully managed samsung device via android device owner needs at least knox version 2.8, otherwise you need to prepare all devices locally via qrcode or nfc

certificate authentication is a basic requirement for a secure enterprise deployment, with am emm you’re able to enroll client certificates and distribute via android enterprise to mobile devices – but with current emm tools it’s further possible to achieve a seamless authentication with kerberos constrained delegation, the continuous synchronisation is provided even a user change his password

vpn started a full device tunnel for windows notebooks, beginning with ios is was possible to configure dynamic vpn based on domain rules, even vpn connection can secure a single app, with android enterprise it is possible to setup the vpn just for work content – was missing? a simple “on demand” could stop draining battery life from “always on” vpn or prohibit mistakes if forgot to “manually” enable it

reliability – inconsistent experience noticed – depending of build version, huawei ignore that device passcode is already set – lenovo yoga missing android enterprise enrollment capability – when sending a (private) picture via (secure) mail, login to work container, attachment lost in mail – honor device completly ignore passcode policy for work container – convert phone number to link in gmail is just working sometimes @theverge 

use cases could realized with android enterprise, e.g. silent app and unattended certificate installation is possible for non-samsung devices could , comparing to device admin, but there’s space for improvement…