Many organizations like logistics companies or cab services, track the corporate devices' locations to ensure that the user bearing the device is on the right track. To obtain the most recent device location, the organizations must enable Location Services on the devices at all times. But many users tend to disable the Location Services on devices either to reduce battery consumption or to avoid displaying the device location for privacy reasons. Mobile Device Manager Plus lets you know the current device location in near real-time and also the device location over a period of time. Additionally, it allows organizations to permanently keep Location Services on and prevent location services from being turned off or disabled on iPhone and Android devices.
Apart from tracking the device location, MDM allows admins to perform various remote actions like corporate wipe, remote alarm based on the current device location.
How to lock location services on Android devices and Apple devices?: You can permanently enable and lock Location Services on Android devices, over-the-air using MDM. In case of iOS devices, you must have the device in hand to permanently enable Location Services, as Apple doesn't allow location services from being turned-off over-the-air to protect user privacy.
To prevent users from turning off location servies on iOS or Android devices the following pre-requisites must be met:
Devices must be with the Administrator, as the settings need to be manually configured on the devices and should be secured with a passcode.
Devices must be either Samsung devices or must be provisioned as Device Owner.
Enabling Location Services
Note: ME MDM app fetch the location details only when there is a significant change (at least 500m) in the location of the mobile device. Due to this, the location shown on the MDM server might be the last location rather than the current location in case of iOS devices for certain scenarios. You can get the exact location of device by sending a notification. To enable notifications on devices, you can associate a app notification profile to the device.
The steps to prevent disabling/turning off Location Services for continuous tracking of device location, differ for devices running OS versions above iOS 12 and below iOS 12
Note: The above Settings will not work on the device when the Screen Time restriction is applied via Profiles.
To apply this restriction to keep location always turned on on multiple devices, take a backup of a device after disabling location services and restore the backup on multiple devices using the steps given here.
Note: In case of devices whose OS has been updated from iOS 11.x to iOS 12.x, you need to disable Location Services again, Apple moved it from Restrictions to Screen Time.
To prevent disabling location services on Android devices, follow the steps given below:
On successful association of the profile, the devices have Location Services enabled permanently and lock Location Services on Android devices, allowing admins to track the device location at all times.
Note: Extended usage of Location Services can affect the device battery life.