[userbinator]

Around 10-15 years ago you could get a completely stock Android from China with basically zero branding, fully unlocked and easily rootable, removable battery, expandable storage, dual DIMs, etc. at a great price. I have a few. Unfortunately many of those small honest OEMs appear to have disappeared, and the bigger ones left have turned scummy.

[greatgib]

Especially Xiaomi did a huge ugly U-turn like this. Use to be the best hardware for low price with the selling point of no-crap fully customable phones.

And then, once they become dominant enough starting to play it like the others but stuffing as many unremovable crap as possible.