Using your own (Android) phone for business/corporate -- how well does it work?

[Scam]

So, I currently have an old iphone through work and an even older Oneplus One as my own phone. I've had my personal number for donkeys, don't want to change it. Also don't want my personal/work numbers getting mixed up. I currently need my iphone to manage a platform whilst on the move (it's iOS only) however in the new year that may not be necessary.

A colleague in the IT department let me know that now we've implemented Airwatch, users can elect to use their Android devices as their work phone also. So, in theory this sounds great. Get a dual-sim phone, run Outlook+calendar for work, Gmail+calendar for personal. But how well does this work in reality? Does anyone use an Android phone for corporate use? Exchange server, the works? Airwatch even? I don't like handing over control of my phone to my company (with Airwatch) but to be honest it'd be worth it to not have to carry around two phones...

I guess my question is more about how nicely they all play together. Two lots of contacts, emails, calendars. Is it just a drag or is it quite simple?

(The other benefit would be free data roaming on my work sim, worldwide )

 

[Sp00n]

I've always been dubious of BYOD and having work MDM policies applied to my personal device and I've kept 2 devices where needed for this reason.

 

[pepp77]

I use a single phone for personal and work, we however are not that strict and I just have to have a good passcode on the phone. I use the built in Android Mail app on the Samsung S6 for my emails, and calendar for calendar.

I then have my own apps and the work apps on the phone. It is a single SIM phone, so 1 number only but it works for me.

 

[Liquid_Entity]

I use a Honor View 10 dual sim phone and it works fine for my personal and work phone. It was doing my head in switching from android to iOS constantly and when I had the out of hours phone I ended up with 3 in my pocket so made so much sense doing it all in 1 phone. I even get the ooh emails and divert the phone so it all comes to 1 phone when it's my turn.

Edit: forgot to mention were using InTune

 

[Scam]

I've always been dubious of BYOD and having work MDM policies applied to my personal device and I've kept 2 devices where needed for this reason.

Yeah. I had a quick look at Airwatch reviews on the Play store and they are quite funny. But it's the sort of thing that bad admins could make terrible for the end user though. Or the sort of thing end-users would just complain about anyway. I know my company forces a fair amount of apps down your throat with Airwatch but as long as it's not a battery drain...

As for them being able to wipe my phone. Hmn I dunno. All of my main important stuff is backed up to Google anyway. Gmail, Calendar, Photos, Drive etc. If some numpty wiped my phone out of the blue I'd be ****** but it wouldn't be the end of the world -- I think!

 

[Tuvoc]

Carrying around two phones is a no-no for me. I use my personal W10 phone with Outlook and Calendar for both personal and work (exchange activesynch) and it all works perfectly. But after more than 3 years there is a hardware fault with the phone now, so about to replace with Android, phone is on order. I hope that works as smoothly and beautifully as W10 has.

 

[Scam]

Do you get any extra battery drain from running say Outlook and Gmail (plus both calendars). Surely if Outlook and everything is on push, you shouldn't really...? How does Contacts on dual Sims work? How do I separate Exchange (and saved) work contacts from my personal ones?

 

[Liquid_Entity]

I don't notice any extra drain on my Honor View 10. My setup is:

Sim 1 - Personal - Superdrug Mobile (Three)
Sim 2 - Work - Three

On my phone my contacts are saved with a Sim 1 or Sim 2 option. When adding a new contact it asks you if you want it on SIM 1 or SIM 2 or phone/google account so I just choose how I want to store that contact. Phone dialler is easy as there are 2 green dial buttons one for personal and one for work. So if I select a phone number or contact I can choose to press the correct sim call button. Data usage is easily swapped between SIMs via the settings in EMUI but I rarely use my personal data as work sim is unlimited anyway. I just went with cheapest personal sim and as I work for Superdrug it was a no brainer with the staff discount £7 for 4gb data, rolling 1 month.

I was wondering how it all worked before I bought a dual sim phone but it's sooooo easy to control sim/phone I don't think I'd ever go back to single SIM.

My Outlook is setup for 2 personal accounts (spam and junk type ones) and my work mail account, plus gmail for another email account. This Honor View 10 even allows me to have 2 WhatsApp applications running at same time so I can have my personal and work whatsapp chats with no changing of settings. Also can do it for Facebook but i don't have 2 accounts for that.

 

[stoofa]

We use Airwatch at work.
For company owned mobiles they are highly locked down Android phones. So you can make calls, browse the internet and take pictures. However what apps can be installed is highly limited - you are given a list of what apps you can install rather than stopped from installing "banned ones".
So be default you're not going to be having Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp etc.
For BYOD we offer the ability to have access to your company email, however it is all stored in a separate container on the phone. We also ensure that the phone meets certain requirements - correct version of iOS or Android, encryption, 6 character PIN that kind of thing.
People can opt-out at any time and we simply remotely remove all of our stuff from the user's phone.

Carrying two phones is annoying, so during the working day I have my personal phone forwarding to my work - so I can grab personal calls and then call back at my convenience. Outside of working hours, the only people who will call me all have my personal number.

 

[hornetstinger]

Could you not stick the phones back to back with souble sided sticky tape? That way you have two phones but physically feels like one bulky phone

 

[Scam]

Thanks for the info stoofa. I don't think ours will be locked down that much -- I know they use it to enforce security paramaters on devices (pin on etc.) but I can't imagine they block any apps. If you don't mind I'd love to hear anyone's experience from your workplace on how Airwatch affects the phone.

 

[uvarvu]

Another Airwatch user here. Ours is set up like this:

• I have the choice of vmware boxer or nine for work emails.
• I can access the company intranet using vmware browser.
• A curated company app store is installed which is separate from Google play. It has some home built apps which allow easy reservation of meeting rooms etc
• My phone is unrestricted in terms of what I can do with it with the exception that it must be password or PIN secured but fingerprint authentication is allowed too.

I can remote wipe the phone myself by logging into the outlook web portal - the list of devices shows up there along with the option to remote wipe.

 

[Scam]

Any performance/battery issues from Airwatch?

 

[uvarvu]

Can't say I've noticed tbh. I think my company make regular tweaks to the security profiles, for instance work events haven't appeared in "Coming up" on the Pixel Launcher for various intervals but it has been fine recently.

 

[stoofa]

I've got a user on an iPhone 8 who says it works really well. No real performance issues, however he has noticed that the device is using a lot of data when he's away from WiFi. I must admit I've never checked to see how much data is being used as my work phone has a work SIM and thus I don't care

 

[Liquidfox]

I don't like handing over control of my phone to my company (with Airwatch)

Trust me, your IT team have far better things to do that mess about with your phone.

 

[Scam]

I've got a user on an iPhone 8 who says it works really well. No real performance issues, however he has noticed that the device is using a lot of data when he's away from WiFi. I must admit I've never checked to see how much data is being used as my work phone has a work SIM and thus I don't care

Ha, well one of the benefits would certainly be my global unlimited data work SIM Mind you I only pay £10/month for my Giffgaff personal SIM. Can't see me finding much cheaper than that! Does anyone even do no-data SIMs?