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Famoco OS

What is the Famoco OS?

The Famoco OS is the secure, hardened Android-based operating system that runs on every Famoco device. It is the foundation on top of which Famoco's applications, your applications, and all the device's hardware components operate.

In simpler terms, if the MDM Platform is where you decide how your fleet should behave, and the Famoco Layer is the interpreter that brings those decisions down to the device, then the Famoco OS is the solid ground everything else stands on, the part that actually talks to the hardware (NFC antennas, biometric sensors, secure elements and more). It keeps the whole device locked down, private, and predictable in the field.

graph TB
    subgraph Device ["Device"]
        HW["Hardware"]
        FOS["Famoco OS"]
        FL["Famoco Layer"]
        APP["Your applications"]
        HW <--> FOS
        FOS <--> FL
        FOS <--> APP
    end
    subgraph MDM [" "]
        direction TB
        MDM_Platform["MDM Platform"]
        NET["Internet"]
        MDM_Platform ~~~ NET
    end
    FL <--> MDM_Platform
    style Device stroke-dasharray: 5 5
    style MDM stroke-dasharray: 5 5
    style NET fill:none,stroke:none

Philosophy

The Famoco OS is built around four principles that sets it apart from a standard consumer OS:

Extended hardware and software control: you decide how the device behaves

The Famoco OS lets you define how your devices operate at the hardware level. Components such as NFC antennas, biometric modules, and secure elements are managed by the OS itself, rather than left to individual apps to figure out. The Famoco OS also exposes an ecosystem of APIs and services to support your business applications, such as the Biometry Service, the Privileged Service, or the VAS SDK.

This control is exposed over the air through the MDM, which means you can adjust device behaviour and apply long-term maintenance policies remotely across your whole fleet. The result is more efficiency day to day, and a longer usable life for each device. Some devices from our customers have been syncing in the field for almost 10 years!

Business-ready playground: the interface is simplified, and yours to lock down, tailor and brand

The Famoco OS ships without any consumer bloatware (i.e. unwanted non-system apps), so the device does only what you configure it to do, nothing more.

The Famoco OS is more than the core system. It also provides services and tools that extend what your devices and applications can do.

You choose how your teams interact with your Famoco devices. The OS, together with the Famoco Layer, allows you to lock down settings, tailor the navigation your users see, and personalise branding so the device matches your operational requirements instead of looking like a generic phone. The interface is very intuitive to use, and many permissions that make you lose precious business time are auto-granted within the OS, so nothing will stop your operations from running.

For more on customising the on-device experience and applying your own brand, see the Look & Feel documentation page.

Enterprise-grade security: encryption, app isolation, and a verified boot chain are built in

The Famoco OS protects your business assets at several levels:

  • Built-in encryption keeps data on the device protected at rest.
  • Strong app isolation prevents applications from interfering with one another or accessing data they shouldn't.
  • Verified Boot ensures the integrity of the system at startup, so the device will only start if its software has not been tampered with.
  • A Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) isolates sensitive operations from the rest of the system, guarding them against unauthorised access and cyber threats.
  • Safeguard is Famoco's alternative to Google Play Integrity, as Famoco's OS ships without Google Play Services. This built-in solution assesses device integrity and ensures your applications run in safe, trusted conditions.

Together, these features keep the device trustworthy from the moment it first powers on to the moment it goes into the field.

Data sovereignty and consumption: a closed and low-consumption environment where your data stays yours

The Famoco OS operates in a fully private and closed environment. It ships with no third-party apps, and produces no metadata leaks to outside parties.

All data generated by your business apps remains yours, and all logistical data generated between your devices and Famoco is easily accessible to you through our many data sources.

Famoco strives to consume as little data as necessary for the MDM to give you accurate and reliable information about your deployments. Audits have shown that Famoco devices, in their basic usage (i.e. regular syncs, excluding operations which require more data like application provisioning or Insights), consume at least 3 times less data as a generic consumer device.

OS versions and updates

Each Famoco device model runs an OS build tailored to its hardware, which means that each model has its own Famoco OS release notes cycle. To find the specific release notes for your device, head to the Devices section and open the page about its model.

OS updates are delivered over-the-air. To learn how to keep your fleets of devices up to date, see the Software Update configuration page.

If you simply need to check which Android version a Famoco device is based on, the Android version FAQ has the information you need.