Just a general PSA about Samsung Galaxy Tablets

[WardMitchell2]

There are two ideas. 

1. Fix the issue with Samsung Galaxy tablets not being able to take pictures as an attachment to a point, line , or polygon. Galaxy phones work but not tablets or at least the Galaxy Tab Active4 Pro 5G

2. Have a link on the Field Maps attachment documentation that allows a user to be informed of the limitations of Field Maps not being able to attach a picture to the map object, which is one of the better functions of Field Maps. This way the user doesn't waste money on tablets that don't work with Field Maps, regarding attachments. Seeing as ESRI has known about this for a while now and has no plans of correcting the issue.

From : ESRI CRS

1. Is there any work around available? A potential work around to still be able to use the current Galaxy Tablet would be to collect the data in the Fields Maps app without any attachments. Then, proceed to take a photo with the camera app and include this attachment later on. 
2. Will this issue be addressed in the next update? The team in charge of deciding addressing current defects is our Development Team. Based on the public information which it's included in BUG-0001373 this is expected as a known limitation. As a reminder, you can check the information of the defect on the MyEsri website. Since I am aware that you are still interested on fixing this issue, you can contact the ArcGIS Field Maps team at ArcGISFieldMaps@esri.com to obtain more information about the decision making on not addressing the issue and expressing your desire to find a solution to this issue that's currently affecting your work.
3. Is there any documentation addressing the "Known Limitation"? The information available is the defect recorded in our system by other users who experienced the same behavior. Nonetheless, this information have not been made public in the documentation of Fields Maps to ensure users are aware of this limitation. I can go ahead and submit, a documentation defect to make users aware of the limitations of ArcGIS Field Maps in Galaxy Tablets.

Samsung Tablet issue with Field Maps.zip

[ColinLawrence]

Just cross posting my reply from the other thread here for visibility.  See more info below:

Hi @WardMitchell2 , hopefully I can help clarify some things around this. The bug linked above BUG-000137313 is one that was logged some time back and was specific to Samsung Tab A (the first generation) devices as these devices had 2GB of memory. The Android system itself would consume about 1.4GB of memory alone with no other apps open, leaving about 500MB of memory to work with. When workflows with attachments are started the system can easily enter a low memory state and this would lead to crashes. This does not apply to your device. 

More recently we have been hearing reports (BUG-000159710) on a wider range of Samsung devices (mostly Tab Actives, like you have) that are experiencing these "resets" of the app when taking photos; these devices do have higher memory capacity as you noted. Recently we did fix a low level memory related issue that alleviate some of these issues but that does not seem to have addressed all of the cases. We continue to investigate this.

This issue has not been easy to reproduce on our end for some reason with Tab Active Pros so any additional information you can provide would be helpful, however trivial it may seem. If you reach out to the field maps email alias you posted above we can work with you more directly on this. I will work on getting a new BUG filed with Support so you and any others experiencing this can get attached to the correct and more relevant BUG. Thank you!

[Wntelesco1]

I will be happy to reproduce this issue for you. We have been seeing the exact same thing. The video attached is EXACTLY what we are seeing.

Colin seriously (AND ESRI) Ward broke it down like video and all. You answered none of the questions. You provided no evidence of a working example of this "hard" to reproduce issue, he did. You implied he and now we and like a bunch of other people are wrong. Your answer is call some else, at least he (Colin) is honest.

Our department and client are disappointed in the field maps deployment we had proposed. Any suggestions on how to explain this one would be much appreciated.

Colin you said it's hard to reproduce. Go to Amazon buy a Samsung Galaxy tab 4 pro. Repeat what you saw. And prove us wrong. Post a video of it working to this thread. 

[ColinLawrence]

Thank you for posting your thoughts and bringing me back to this thread @Wntelesco1 as I think it warrants a new update. 

Our problem has been our ability to reproduce this consistently in house which would allow us to debug exactly what is surfacing this problem. We have purchased a Galaxy Tab 4 Pro with the expressed purposes of reproducing on this device but even that device provided inconsistent results. Also, given this has been reported on a wide range of Samsung devices we have tried on different models with different configurations with little luck. We do not believe it is tied to any specific model but does seem tied exclusively to Samsung devices.

Given we have seen this in house at least inconsistently we have been able to make a few inferences. The first is that the problem lies in the handoff between Field Maps and the camera app as the Take Photo action opens the Samsung Camera app and upon returning to Field Maps we see this problem. The second is that it appears to be memory related, though not explicitly. For example when working directly with some customers we were able to find that the problem happened much more frequently when multiple other apps had been opened previously. In one example, a customer could reproduce every time when connected to Android Auto but much less often when disconnected from the car. Naturally, when I tested with Android Auto myself I did not see the problem. Memory usage levels reported by these devices did not seem to be overly concerning (and Field Maps remained relatively stable) but there may be some logic happening at the OneUI level that is terminating apps. 

I had found an Android developer setting that allowed me to replicate the behavior as well. If the "Dont keep activities" setting is toggled on, every time an activity is sent to the background (ie Field Maps when taking a photo attachment) that activity is killed and when the photo is captured and you are returned to Field Maps, it shows the reload screen and all data captured in that popup is lost. We have no logic in the app to reload the map in this or any scenario, which seems to confirm the app is being terminated in the background in yours and other customer's scenarios as well. 

I do not intend this to sound like excuses or overexplaining, so what are we doing about it? We have a larger group of us looking at a short term solution that should prevent the reset problem from happening but requires a lot of work to ensure this does not diminish the app in other unexpected ways. We cannot make any promises at this point but if everything goes well we hope to deliver this soon, within the next release or two and may also consider a targeted release depending on the timing. Its also possible we release a preview build to a subset of customers before releasing this to everyone; please DM me your contact info or reach us at arcgisfieldmaps@esri.com and we can include you if we feel this route is needed. 

I hope this information was helpful.