Getting Ready for Android 15 (2024)

Android 15 is generally available as of September 2024. This document is your guide for updates in Android 15 and preparations to make for your organization’s Workspace ONE UEM environment. More information on the Android 15 can be found here: Android Developer website.

Resources for Application Developers

• Changes that affect all apps can be reviewed here.

• Changes affecting apps that target Android 15 can be reviewed here.

• Updates to non-SDK interface restrictions can be reviewed here.

• Some changes affecting enterprises can be found here.

What’s New in Android 15

Google introduces a host of new features and enhancements for the enterprise in Android 15. Below is a comprehensive list of these features.

Note: This article does not indicate support for any of the below features with Workspace ONE UEM. To learn more about new, supported features, follow our Workspace ONE UEM Release Notes.

Embedded SIM (eSIM) Remote Provisioning and Management

Android 15 allows organizations to remotely provision embedded SIMs (eSIMs) to managed devices. Organizations can obtain eSIM activation codes from their carriers and push them to devices via UEM solutions. This cuts down on the effort required to onboard or change eSIM providers across a fleet of managed devices. Android joins other platforms, including iOS and Windows, that support remote eSIM provisioning.

On corporate-owned devices, this provisioning process is silent, and organizations can optionally activate the managed eSIM. On employee-owned devices, end users are required to consent to activating the managed eSIM.

Because eSIMs provisioned by organizations are considered managed, organizations can remove them from the device at any time.

Private Spaces

With Android 15, devices enrolled in Work Profile or Corporate Owned Personally Enabled mode, users can now create a Private Space. This is a separate app container in the personal profile that allows users to lock certain applications behind a separate pin or password. For Corporate Owned Personally Enabled (COPE) devices, Android 15 also introduces the ability for organizations to disable Private Spaces.

Private spaces are not available on devices in Work Managed mode.

Changes to Screen Recording

With Android 15, Google introduces two enhancements to screen recording/sharing that can help secure sensitive organization resources:

• Applications can now detect if the device’s screen is being recorded while said applications are in the foreground.
• Applications can share or record just an app window rather than the entire device screen. This feature was first enabled in Android 14 QPR2 for certain devices, such as Pixel. When starting a screen sharing session, users are prompted to select whether they wish to share a single application or the entire screen.

More Device Management Policies

Google has also introduced new device management features with Android 15 that allow organizations to:

• Disable Thread Networking, a networking protocol that allows Android to interact with smart home and other IoT systems. This is similar to the introduction of a policy in Android 14 to disable ultra-wideband. This policy is only available on corporate-owned devices.
• Prevent users from adding embedded SIMs to a managed device. This policy is only available on corporate-owned devices.
• Disable Assist Content: Prevents contextual information about an application from being visible to Assistant applications. Contextual information includes what is displayed on the application’s view currently in the foreground.
• Manage screen brightness and timeout on COPE devices: Android 15 extends the ability to set a screen brightness level, enable/disable automatic screen brightness, and set the screen timeout for Corporate Owned Personally Enabled (COPE) devices. This was previously only possible on Work Managed devices.
• Prevent users from modifying default applications in the personal profile on Corporate Owned Personally Enabled devices.

Known Issues

We have identified an issue preventing enrollment of Android 15 devices into Workspace ONE UEM in Custom DPC mode. Devices on Android 15 whose Google Play Services (com.google.android.gms) version is lower than 24.29.00 will fail to enroll into Workspace ONE UEM. Although no failures are seen in Intelligent Hub, devices are stuck in an Enrollment In Progress status in the Workspace ONE UEM Console, and applications, profiles, and other resources are not pushed to the device.

This issue will not affect most employee-owned devices since Google Play Services is a system that Android updates automatically. If needed, follow these steps to manually update Google Play Services - Keep your device & apps working with Google Play Services. For corporate-owned devices, if the Google Play Services version in the device image is lower than 24.29.00, this issue will be seen when enrolling with Intelligent Hub 24.07. We are actively working to resolve this issue in an upcoming release of Intelligent Hub. More information will be posted in this document.

Workspace ONE UEM Console Support for Android 15

Omnissa automatically updates the device seed data in our Workspace ONE UEM console on SaaS to support Android 15 enrollments, enrollment restrictions, and any filters targeting Android 15.

In case the seed data is needed for an On-Premise environment, the cumulative seed data update script below can be used to support Android 15.

OS Updates Seed Script

Application Support for Android 15

Omnissa validates applications with the latest OS releases to ensure your devices are successful upon upgrade. To ensure a successful upgrade, users are encouraged to update to the specified version of each Android app listed below to fully support Android 15.