[riedel]

They have really good hardware and there is hoards of Indian and Pakistani Devs that within a few days port all possible aftermarket ROMs to the hardware (also Xiaomi does publish kernel sources without any delay). The only huge annoyance is that they check that you do not live in China by monitoring your movement for 3 weeks before they allow unlocking the bootloader. If they would allow relocking the bootloader with a custom signature (like pixels allow) it would be the perfect phone if you like it cheap and do not care about the ethical implications of the supply chain ( then again you could by them used: my redmi note 7 still runs really smoothly on lineage 18.1 with the latest security patches).

[2Gkashmiri]

agreed but why do they have to make the stock ui so difficult? why is there no middle ground between the default and a custom rom setup?

i bought a motorola g30 and was pleasantly surprised with the stock feel. i could uninstall any app and i did. i am not forced to any dark patterns or forced to see ads or recommendations or asked to give consent to data sharing. not signed in to any google or any system account. the software "hides" between me and the work be it calls or apps or browsing. i want that, not being reminded to be stuck with a beacon.

i understand the whole hacker culture arond xiaomi and devs. i had an xiaomi mi pad 1. someone here on HN told me about a custom rom and in less than 3 hours i managed to brick the device. now i am unable to use it.

please help me understand one thing, what is with android custom os companies and locking down bootloader and making the process so finicky ? why isn't the system designed to be as easy as installing windows or linux or even how raspberry pi installs the os? why is android so fucked up bad in this regard?

[powerapple]

Xiaomi's business model is to sell good hardware with very little margin, and hopefully make a lot money on services (i.e. cloud, ad).

[tata71]

How the custom ROM scene hasn't demanded devices and software that enable verified boot is beyond me.

[huxflux]

You can unlock it even if you live in China. Just queue up like the rest of the world. No worries.

[riedel]

Really??? I was was just assuming this was the point of this all. So what is the point of this monitoring then (I think you have to lock in and share your location)? Is it only that certain individuals are denied unlocking? Do they just want to present mass unlocking like in a click farm? Other (non-chinese) vendors just offer immediate unlocking.

[dirtyid]

I think it was to increase friction of resellers installing shady 3rd party ROMs right away. If I remember right, waiting period was implemented after drama with resellers loading ROMs with spyware a few years ago. Maybe thinking is big sellers won't hoard stock for multiple weeks. My understanding is vendors that offer unlock actually opens the phone and starts the unlock countdown first and repackages after. I don't think there's any official endorsement/support for it.