SOTI Pulse Logo

Samsung devices unresponsive

D
Dgoodwin
Tunstall Healthcare (UK) Ltd

Hi,

We have successfully built several hundred Samsung devices over the last couple of years using Mobicontrol. However, the latest Samsung A21 phone and Galaxy Tab A7 tablet are giving us problems. Every one we build is OK until it is restarted, and then it becomes unresponsive and you often cannot even enter the PIN - it either freezes or goes black.

If we re-start them a few times (difficult since the icons don't respond properly) they sometimes work OK, but another re-start and the problem comes back.

We have seen this in the factory, and our customers have reported it.

If we remove the device from SOTI/remove the Mobicontrol agent then the tablet appears to work as normal. Not sure why, as the agent seems to start AFTER the PIN is entered.

Obviously this is causing major problems as we have had to stop building devices for customers. Anybody got any ideas?

Cheers in advance.

samsung
4 years ago
Android
ANSWERS
RC
Raymond Chan Diamond Contributor
4 years ago

Many months ago, I heard from Samsung internal source that the firmware for Samsung A2x and lower phone models were developed by new software development team in Vietnam, and there were many known problems.   Last year, I did feature/compatibility tests for some of my biggest governmental customers and rejected these Samsung phone models based on our own test results, and all the higher-end models (e.g. A3x, A5x, A7x, etc.) passed our tests.  I don't know if there will be any major firmware patches to fix the A2x phone models.

RC
Raymond Chan Diamond Contributor
4 years ago

You might also need to check the following on you Samsung A21 phone and Galaxy Tab A7 tablet :

1. feature-control profile options enabled, or any script commands (documented or undocumented) sent to the devices after bootup.

2. power management settings on the device, especially with newer firmware version.

3. options in kiosk or application-run-control profiles, if any is used after boot-up.

D
Dgoodwin
4 years ago

Hi Raymond, thanks for your reply.

It's looking like the issue may be due to the Blocking/Disabling options in the Advanced Lockdown Settings. We have always kept the same option ticked, but for some reason the latest Samsung devices (and possibly others, but we only use Samsung currently) don't seem to like it.

RC
Raymond Chan Diamond Contributor
4 years ago

Samsung has removed some KNOX runtime libraries from the firmware of their low-end devices.  If I remember correctly,  A2x are also affected.  You can confirm my checking the versions of major library modules from the device Settings.

Some advanced kiosk mode options may not be properly supported on such devices.  Have you done any tests to turn off Blocking/Disabling options in the Advanced Lockdown Menu profile?  And confirmed that the problem is gone?

D
Dgoodwin
4 years ago

Yes, the testing of this has gone well so far and seems to confirm my previous post.

J
JCMOD@SOTI
4 years ago

Hi Dgoodwin,

Thank you for posting in SOTI Central.

Can you confirm if Disabling Package Blocking via your lockdown profile configuration fixes the problem you've outlined?

Reference:

Regards,

D
Dgoodwin
4 years ago

Hi,

Yes, the problem has been cured by unticking the 2nd box and ticking the 1st box instead. It is important to untick the 'Disable Factory Reset' option in any lockdown profiles though if doing this.

Note, that the unresponsiveness issue only affected recent Samsung devices (in our case it was the latest A7 tablet and the A21s phone).

Also, I would like to thank Ronan at SOTI support for his assistance in the matter.

Regards,

Darren

Similar Discussions