Collecting data from Android mobile devices just got easier. ModeOne Technologies, a provider of a game-changing, patented Software as a Service (SaaS) framework to automate the remote, same-day collection and analysis of relevant smartphone data for litigation, compliance, and investigation purposes, recently released Android Version 2.0.
“Android smartphone data collections have been the most difficult data source for lawyers and examiners to collect,” said Ryan Frye, Chief Innovation Officer at ModeOne. Android Version 2.0 addresses the difficulties organizations face in e-discovery when they target data from Android smartphones.
Difficulties in Android Data Collection
Android is an open-source operating system developed by Google that powers smartphones and related mobile devices. Various manufacturers of Android devices use the open-source OS on their smartphones and can make changes to it, adding a software layer or “skin” over Android, such as the Samsung One UI (About Samsung One UI) . Even Google adds a skin to its Pixel smartphones: Pixel UI.
Google skins support various versions of the Android OS installed on numerous devices and add additional security, apps, and other features that vary by manufacturer and device. Android’s dominant 71% global market share compounds this fragmentation. In effect, for any smartphone data collection, you’re most likely going to target an Android device, which may be very different than the one you previously collected from.
Manufacturers also install their apps to distinguish their brand, integrate with specific hardware, or add features not found on Apps from the Google Play Store. Manufacturers can add additional layers of security to harden the open-source OS and set up a default proprietary messaging app on their smartphones to give users an alternative to Google Messaging, especially if a user’s cellular service does not support Rich Communication Services (RCS). In this case, messages may route through Google’s servers, not those of the providers.
With the variety of devices, apps, and the fragmentation of the Android OS, data collection from Android smartphones is more like the “Hunt for Red October” than a consistent, repeatable operation. But that’s not the case with ModeOne’s Android 2.0.
ModeOne Android 2.0
ModeOne designed Android 2.0 to make data discovery on Android smartphones easy, secure, and consistent. The SaaS framework is cable-free, delivering access via Wi-Fi or Cellular networks. The collection software runs on the device, rendering it unnecessary to use Android in “Developer Mode” or another, less secure phone setting to get at the data.
Android 2.0 can collect targeted data from a broader array of Android devices that use Rich Communication Services (RCS) technology, the next-generation messaging protocol, without workarounds. RCS offers Android users more secure and sophisticated features than SMS, including real-time chat, high-quality multimedia sharing, and group messaging.
ModeOne provides a Collection Progress Dashboard to surface metrics on the number and types of data collected from an Android device and the completion percentage achieved over time. With Android 2.0, you can select pictures and videos automatically or manually from the photo gallery and apply a date filter at the time of collection.
Along with ModeOne’s iOS (Apple)s SaaS solution, Android 2.0 addresses the many technical challenges corporations and their outside counsel face with data collection from smartphone devices. The revolutionary, truly remote SaaS framework supports litigation services providers, law firms, corporations, government entities, law enforcement agencies, and cybersecurity services firms. For more information about ModeOne, please visit ModeOne.io.