Knox E-FOTA and sequential updates

Making firmware easier for you to manage

In March 2020, Samsung released Knox E-FOTA One — a great successor to the previous iteration, Knox E-FOTA Advanced.

One of the key improvements is the enhanced management of sequential updates; something that IT admins had to consider manually in Knox E-FOTA Advanced.

In Knox E-FOTA Advanced, an IT admin would need to discover the current version of firmware installed on a device and identify the target firmware required. From here, the IT admin would need to find the highest available firmware update for the device, then create and issue a campaign. This process would then need to be repeated until the target firmware was reached. This is a time consuming and difficult task.

For example, we have a Samsung Galaxy A8 on Android N (7.1.1) that needs to be updated to its latest version, Android P (9.0).

In Knox E-FOTA Advanced, we have manually found the update path below:

Each update is an individual update campaign the IT Admin has had to create and issue to the device after confirmation the previous update has succeeded. This is also difficult and increasingly time-consuming when managing large numbers of devices with varying firmware versions and when different models are being managed.

Step in, Knox E-FOTA One…

Knox E-FOTA One takes out all of the hard work for IT Admins.

When a campaign is issued to a device, such as the Samsung Galaxy A8 mentioned above, Knox E-FOTA One performs the following process:

1. Campaign configured and issued to device
2. Device client checks current firmware:
   1. At or above target firmware – Campaign Complete
   2. Below target firmware – Continue to step 3
3. Device client confirms the next highest firmware (not higher than target) that is available
4. Device client downloads and installs firmware
5. Device restarts and finalised firmware install
6. Go to Step 2

All of this happens automatically – simply by the IT Admin specifying the firmware version required for the models they wish to manage in a Knox E-FOTA One campaign. Using the same example, with Knox E-FOTA One, if an IT admin wants to upgrade from Android 7.1.1 to the latest version of Android 9.0, all they need to do is create one campaign for this upgrade.

The Automatic Sequential Updates feature is just one of the many improvements Knox E-FOTA One makes to firmware management. Learn more about Knox E-FOTA, or about Samsung’s other mobile management products.

For more information on how to use Knox E-FOTA One, see the Admin Guide