cross-posted from: https://lemdro.id/post/3017869 (!xiaomi@lemdro.id)
Great. Had 2 Xiaomi phones now, as I love the hardware and ability to quite easily unlock in order to install Xiaomi.eu and Magisk. If this is no longer possible, my next phone won’t be Xiaomi.
This only applies if you stay on stock rom. Xiaomi.eu will update normally as it is a custom rom (despite being officially endorsed by Xiaomi).
Overlooking the title, the real news to me in this article is the rapidly increasing difficulty of getting permission from that vendor to unlock your bootloader in the first place.
And why should you need permission to do this?
I wish flashing custom ROMs was like flashing custom firmware to routers. With most routers you can return it back to stock and no one will know the difference.
Once its unlocked it trips a fuse on a hardware level.
A pixel is better but not perfect
It’s so weird that Google’s phone has been the most accessible for unlocking your phone. Oneplus used to be good too, but then they became bad in that area too and now custom rom scene seems dead for newer Oneplus phones.
Oneplus used to be good too,
On that note, Xiaomi also used to be good. In fact, xiaomi’s initial popularity is for the ease of unlocking and rooting. Once it gain popularity, it started to lock down, much like the path OnePlus is on.
Oh, did they? Easily unlocking the bootloader was exactly what I chose my OnePlus 6t for. Sad to see how fast they dropped that.
Yeah, I’ve been waiting since a week to unlock my bootloader. I still have to wait 4 more days to be able to unlock. Once it’s done I’m going to Lineage OS.
Xiaomi phones have a good hardware to price ratio. I’ve got a headphone jack, dual SIM, and a dedicated memory card slot.
I got my Redmi Note 11 one and a half years ago. The waiting time for their shitty tool to unlock the bootloader after a week wasn’t the biggest obstacle for me. What really pisses me off is that they violated their obligations to upload the kernel sources and therefore significantly delayed custom ROM development. While being a cheap and popular device, it hasn’t received Lineage OS support and probably never will. That ship has sailed because Xiaomi just doesn’t give a fuck about what their end of the deal is if they want to use a decent FOSS based OS on their phones instead of spending huge amounts of money and time to build their own ecosystem.
It does seems that they just made it nearly impossible to unlock the phone for the Chinese version of their phone: You need to be ‘level 5’ in their shitty forum. And from what I gathered this involves posting hundred or thousand of messages with a lot of likes.
I don’t think it will take long before they pull the same kind of bullshit for the global version of the phone unless there is a general outcry.
And why should you need permission to do this?
Xiaomi historically had a problem with resellers installing malware in custom ROM on their phones, so they started putting up more and more obstacles to unlocking the bootloader over time, while still providing an avenue for legitimate customers to unlock.
I don’t know what spurred the current action though.
It’s possible that rooting your phone impedes the ability for the Chinese spyware to work properly.
The only spyware you should be concerned about is that from your own country. That’s the country that can actually do things against you with the information. What are you worried about “China” doing with your chats or metadata on which apps are open?
Word. All this China is a big brother fails account for the fact that most states today are big brothers. It’s only a matter of degree.
Don’t people usually flash a custom rom when they unlock their bootloader? Somehow if you are still on the stock rom can’t you just flash the update since you have already unlocked the bootloader?
No one should be using their Chinese spyware OS anyway.
