

I will walk through the different options and what I tried, the challenges encountered, and ultimately what succeeded in the end.

The third option would be to flash a custom recovery partition using TWRP which is popular for Android users who wish to install custom operating systems. Fortunately there are many communities built around these devices and there was an available stock (default) image that I could download. Secondly, and slightly more difficult, would be to flash (copy) the original ROM of the tablet. This requires that the default recovery partition still be intact on the device.

The first and easiest option would be to perform a factory reset which would wipe the operating system, apps, and files on the tablet, bringing it back to the original state. There were several potential ways to attempt bringing the tablet back to a usable state. Unfortunately the company was no longer around to provide the administrator passcode to disable the MDM software.ĭeciding that this would be an interesting challenge, I accepted the tablet and began to get to work on it.

Now decommissioned, the user wanted to be able to use the tablet without all of the restrictions and apps previously required by the organization. The tablet was stuck in kiosk mode and had severe limitations imposed on it from a previous life as a company’s work device. A user recently provided me with a tablet which was using IBM’s MAAS360 MDM (Mobile Device Management) which was not allowing the user to functionally use the tablet.
