Android 16 / One UI 8.5: Screen Pinning behavior changed when notifications are received

Hello,

we would like to ask whether other customers using Samsung devices with Android 16 / One UI 8.5 have observed similar behavior.

Environment
- Samsung Galaxy tablets e.g. X816B
- Android 16 / One UI 8.5
- Android Enterprise (COPE) & Intune
- Screen Pinning / App Pinning used for dedicated business applications

After upgrading affected devices to One UI 8.5, notifications and certain system UI elements can appear while an application is pinned. In our environment, this behavior was not observed before the Android 16 / One UI 8.5 update and appears to be related to a change in the interaction between Screen Pinning and notification handling.

This issue represents a significant operational risk for our environment. Prior to Android 16 / One UI 8.5, notifications were effectively suppressed while an application was running in Screen Pinning mode. Since the identified Android framework change, certain notifications can appear despite active Screen Pinning, impacting the intended behavior of this feature and our operational use case.

We are already working directly with Samsung Enterprise Technical Support (ETS).

Samsung R&D investigated the issue and informed us that the root cause has been linked to an Android framework change. According to Samsung, the issue has already been registered with Google and is currently under review.

Questions to the community

- Has anyone else observed changes in Screen Pinning behavior on Samsung devices running Android 16 / One UI 8.5?
- Have you identified any temporary workaround other than manually enabling Do Not Disturb (DND)?
- Is this affecting only Samsung devices or have similar observations been made on other Android 16 devices?

Thanks in advance