14 DAY TRIAL // With more than two billion Android active devices right now, finding the right one for your enterprise needs can be difficult. Google wants to help and is providing a list of worthy phones that can serve in an enterprise environment, and Samsung is conspicuously missing from that selection.
There is no doubt that when you think about premium Android phones, Samsung must be on top of that list. Their devices always seem to be the ones in competition with Apple’s iPhone, and for a good reason. Even if the company had some bumps and explosions along the way, the Galaxy and Note brans still carry a lot of weight.
We also have to keep in mind that a good swath of the Android market is not made up by regular users but by the enterprise clients. And by that, we mean people that are using their phones for work and have them integrated with various other enterprise solutions, such as clouds, servers, and so on.
Samsung is not a choice for Google
It’s becoming more and more difficult for users and companies to keep track of everything new in the Android world. New phone manufacturers seem to pop up out of nowhere, so Google figured that it would be a nice idea to offer a list of devices that are ready for enterprise use.
Lo and behold, the biggest phone maker on the planet, Samsung, is not present on that list. The reasons or reasons why Samsung has been omitted are not explained, but we do have a set of criteria, and we can infer, with some ease, why the South Korean company didn’t make the cut.
The Android Enterprise Recommended is the new program from Google that sets up some of the best practices and common requirements for various phones, along with some proper testing.
First of all, all devices must meet the hardware requirements for Android 7.0+, and that should not be difficult for Samsung, although it took the company a long time to move to Android 8.0 (and the process is not yet over.)
Secondly, all Android updates provided by Google have a window of only 90 days to reach the devices, and we all know that Samsung is very particular with their updating process. If anything, from all the reasons why Samsung is not in the Android Enterprise Recommended, this is most likely the most important.
Thirdly, unlocked devices must be available directly from the manufacturer or reseller. And lastly, all devices must provide support for bulk deployment, including zero-touch enrollment.
With Samsung absent from Google’s list of devices worthy of the enterprise use, people will have to settle with BlackBerry KEYone and Motion, Google Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel 2, and Pixel 2 XL, Huawei Mate 10, Mate 10 Pro, P10, P10 Plus, P10 Lite, and quite a few others.
It remains to be seen if Samsung will make any efforts to change their policy, but it’s very likely that’s it’s not going to happen anytime soon.
