[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] donnyh13:
Greetings all,

I am here hoping that somebody can guide me to a solution for a problem I just encountered. I recently purchased a second-hand phone from Ebay. The seller seems to be a used cell-phone seller, and not just selling a personal phone. The phone is in decent shape, and unlocked. But it would appear that it used to be a company phone.

After selecting my language, and agreeing to the terms, a message came up saying that “this device is protected by Knox cloud service” (or something similar), and I need to connect to the internet. Upon connecting to the internet it updates an app called “Knox Enrolment Services”, then asks me to accept a user agreement that my corporate organization can see everything I do on this device, control the phone, etc. The only option is to accept and continue or go back. (which leads back to the same page upon being pushed.) If I accept those terms, it then takes me to an animated page of a building and a floating lock, with a message saying, “Preparing work device”. This remains for several minutes, and then finally takes me to a login screen for VMWare with no options, except “Next” (Which is only available upon entering email/password). To press the phone’s back button brings up a message that says, if you stop now you will have to re-enter all of your data again, with the options to press yes (cancel), no (don’t cancel), or wipe.

If I restart the phone at this point I am taken to a normal swipe to unlock screen (except below “Swipe to unlock” it says “this device is managed by your organization”). However, soon a VMWare page pops up saying: “Something went wrong with discovery”, with no options except “Retry” and “reset”, Pushing reset wipes the device and begins the process all over from where I began. If I restart the phone into safe mode I can swipe and unlock the phone, I can open settings, even enable developer settings and unlock OEM, USB debugging, etc.

In “Device Admin Settings” It shows 4 apps, including “Hub” (With a VMWare logo), and “Knox Enrollment Service”. Besides the lost device and lock screen apps.

As best as I have found online (see below), it would seem the company that used to own these phones has failed to removed the IMEI number from their “portal”. At this point is this a permanent company phone? Is there a way to remove this? So far I just keep seeing that the company needs to remove it from their end. But that isn’t going to be possible, as I have no way of tracking down who used to own it. Since I seem to be able to activate debugging, OEM unlock, and can get into the recovery mode, is there hope of somehow wiping this restriction out?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Samsung Galaxy XCover 4

Model SM-G390W

Android Version 9

Kernel 3.18.91-17669778

Here are two posts I have found so far by googling.

Home - Broadcom Community - Discussion Forums, Technical Docs, Ideas and Blogs

The site home page

communities.vmware.com

The pictures posted in this forum are identical, except I do not get the drop down offering what group to join.

The phone is protected by Knox Cloud Service

I bought a brand new Samsung S8 in 2017 from Verizon Corp. store in the US. I recently moved to Portugal and cracked the glass on my S8, so instead of replacing the glass, I bought a new phone. I was going to use the old S8 to be a TV remote and remote to our sound system. So to remove all...

forum.earlybird.club