Restrict turn off iOS Location service

Any update on this.  It would be very nice to be able to force Location Services Always On for the SMC App on iOS.  In order for us to deploy phones we would like to be able to ship the phone directly from our carrier (We are using Apple DEP/Sophos Central Mobile) and then only have to require the user to enter their email address and password and then it would take care of the rest.  We have most of this working with exception of turning on Location Services.  That seems like it would make alot of our lives easier. These are corporate owned phones so their shouldnt be any funny stuff about the legality.

Comments, Suggestions, Replies are wanted and desired!

Thanks

Hi, 

The iOS device must be enrolled through DEP to block users from tampering with location services. Please refer to the article https://www.apple.com/business/dep/ 

Haridoss -  I realize you have to Deploy using Apple DEP. I was asking was there a way to force location services on through applying a profile or policy during enrollment so that the user wouldn't have to do that step.  We plan to drop ship phones to employees and this is one step that we would have to have them carry out.

Thanks!

as far as i am aware there are now options to force enable location services for the SMC app or any other however it is deployed.

To reiterate- I'm talking about taking a brandnew phone out of the apple box. Turning it on - waiting a few minutes for it to see the cell service,  because we are using Apple DEP with Sophos the phone gets a profile , enrolled - but we still have to manually turn on Location Services.  Can that step be completed in the enrollment process.  If so how?

yes i fully understand what you trying to explain, as far as i am aware its not possible however you deploy. there are no options in the DEP profile and no policies on SMS to auto enable location services.

also even if there was a way to enable location services automatically all the user has to do is delete the SMC app and location isn't possible (unless you disable the ability to remove all apps as it cannot be done on an individual app basis)

We have it set so that the user cannot remove SMC.

how do you disable the user removing SMC App? it is possible to disable removal of the profile via DEP but not the app, from my experience its disable removal of all apps or none at all.

We have these devices locked down and also have removed most of the apple apps using Apps List and then selecting Forbidden Apps against our list.

We have these devices locked down and also have removed most of the apple apps using Apps List and then selecting Forbidden Apps against our list.

yeah thats for all apps as i mentioned above.