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I bought a Huawei Honor 7x two months ago, and was happy with it until a software update went out that bricked mobile data on my device. Factory resetting the

by adbge 8y ago

I bought a Huawei Honor 7x two months ago, and was happy with it until a software update went out that bricked mobile data on my device. Factory resetting the device doesn't fix it (nor messing with APN settings), so I looked into flashing a ROM onto it to see if that'd do it, only to discover that Huawei has taken down the service which allowed customers to unlock their devices's bootloader. Now you have to contact support and wait for them to email you an unlock code. This is clearly a user hostile move: it makes it harder to load your own software on a device you purchased and, in my case, fix my own device. I won't be buying from Huawei again.

fermienrico 8y ago
Just to add to your conclusion, I think Apple leads in privacy. I would never buy a Chinese phone just from the fact that the Chinese government has a tremendous oversight and interference with large businesses. Yes, US has that issue with NSA but at least Apple stands against abuse of data privacy and has a firm ethetical stance to protect consumers data. I don’t trust Google for that matter. Edit: I feel like there is going to be what-about-tism responses. So, before you respond, ask yourself if you can criticize the Chinese government, protest against it and make a change in China. Last time that happened in Tiananmen square, there was massacre. That does not happen in US.
- kodablah 8y ago
  > Yes, US has that issue with NSA but at least Apple stands against abuse of data privacy and has a firm ethetical stance to protect consumers data. I don’t trust Google for that matter. I have the opposite feeling. Apple gladly hands over iCloud storage management to the Chinese (gladly meaning they won't make a statement even about whether they are happy about it), whereas I trust Google to keep my data on servers they own and are subject to their rules. Be careful about "stands against abuse" when what you mean is "stands against abuse sometimes". Also be careful about "firm ethical stance" when they choose not to confirm that stance in places where it is at odds with the law...not very firm I'd say. At the very least, I'll take the consistent company even if I dislike their data collection practices.
  - fermienrico 8y ago
    Very good points, I think I concede with "stands against abuse" and "firm ethical stance". Apple will do whatever the board and the shareholders demand. I am mixing up ethics with business motivation. Apple - Good ethics, but tied to business performance. They cannot and will not exit China or go against the grain with the Chinese authorities. Google - Sells your data to advertisers, but has good ethical stance against authorities abusing data. Google doesn't operate in China since a decade or more I believe. They've somehow convinced the shareholders.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      It’s eady to “convince shareholders” when a negligible part of your revenue comes from China. So far this is just a rumor.... https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/1/17638480/google-china-search-engine-censored-report https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/1/17638480/google-china-sear...
  - graeme 8y ago
    If you turn off icloud, then the iphone is still presumably quite secure in China, correct? I had assumed the android phones probably were breached by the chinese government, rendering data access superfluous in most cases. But I'm not especially well informed on the latter point beyond seeing articles like this one. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/tech-news/millions-of-android-apps-send-sensitive-data-to-china-u-of-t-report/article28865055/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/tech-news/million...
  - ksec 8y ago
    Which is why I have been calling for an iOS Time Capsule. Especially for the Chinese Market. Instead Apple cared more about increasing their Services Revenue and push its user to iCloud. And before anyone said you could use iTunes to Backup, please consider 90% of users don't like touching their computer anymore. It is simply not an elegant solution. In an ideal world Cloud would be everything we wished for, No More BitFlip, Error, Drive Failure, Software Failure, Power Failure, File System Failure etc. But then it is very uneasy that government has all the data. Via iCloud Social Engineering, or Chinese Government forcing companies to give away those Data.
- jeffbax 8y ago
  Removing some things from the Chinese App Store like VPN, Apple absolutely leads on privacy, by miles. Who knows what is going into the software for 100% Chinese phones, and Google's new iMessage answer isn't even going to be encrypted, not to mention reports their mobile OS is already losing out on privacy features to the Ad team.
  - fermienrico 8y ago
    I want to live in a world where businesses are formed based on the value they deliver to the consumer directly. Not siphoning the data and selling it to third parties. Ever growing advertisement and marketing needs/greed has created a universe of stuff around us that makes me ever so vigilant of companies selling me stuff for cheap and in turn selling me advertisements. In old days (before the internet), if I buy a PC from Apple or IBM, you get what you pay for. Besides the cable companies / newspapers / magazines bombarding ads, everything back in the day was 1:1 - you pay for something, you get value for it. Now a days, we have large companies losing money while killing competition (Uber), large companies in bed with government, and large companies in bed with advertisers and marketing agencies. Fuck the world. I can't wait to see Dieter Rams' documentary premier this October. From the trailers, it looks like it is addressing the very fabric of today's society than talking about industrial design. [1] I don't want to be a product. I want to be a loyal customer. [1] https://www.hustwit.com/rams/ https://www.hustwit.com/rams/
    - dijit 8y ago
      Argh. I hate to play devils advocate on this issue. Here goes: it seems like that model doesn’t work anymore. People look for what it costs on paper. You already here people talking about Apple as if it’s some impossible luxury standard. Can you imagine if computers became £5,000 for the base model again? I can’t imagine anyone paying for email in this day and age. And I certainly can’t imagine people paying for operating systems. Windows only has market dominance because it comes pre-installed and is effectively free. That’s the issue. If you’re competing in this market; then you’re competing with “free” from the consumers eyes.
      - 8y ago
- robotresearcher 8y ago
  Kent State is within living memory, lest we forget. Tiananmen Square massacre, 1989. Kent State massacre, 1970.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - DmenshunlAnlsis 8y ago
    There’s a difference, namely that you can say “Kent State” and look it up online, read about it in textbooks, see the newspaper articles, and discuss it online without fear. Try that with the Tiananmen Square massacre in China. Another difference is that four civilians died in Kent state, while 1022 died in Tiananmen Square. That’s three orders of magnitude difference, and why Kent State is typically called “Kent State Shootings” while Tiananmen Square was a “Massacre”. In fact an order of magnitude more policemen and military died in Tiananmen than overall fatalities at Kent State. They are not comparable. I’m fact more people died in Tiananmen than died protesting the entire Vietnam War in the US.
    - robotresearcher 8y ago
      No one claimed they were identical. Kent State is a simple counter example to the claim made in the parent comment.
      - simonh 8y ago
        Kent state was tragic, but not only is it not subject to pervasive and draconian state censorship, it also was not explicitly ordered as an intentional massacre by the government. That particular distinction really does matter.
        robotresearcher 8y ago
        So it was a less bad massacre of protesters by government forces. Shall we forget about it, and claim it doesn’t happen here? Hell no.
- e12e 8y ago
  >> This is clearly a user hostile move: it makes it harder to load your own software on a device you purchased and, in my case, fix my own device. > Just to add to your conclusion, I think Apple leads in privacy. Its seems like a bit of a non-sequitor to go from an Android manufacturer that will (after an inconvenient interaction by email) allow you to run whatever code you want - to Apple - that doesn't allow anything of the kind? Fwiw I do think ios is leading in terms of off the shelf security on a device. But not really in terms of privacy vis-à-vis a custom Android/Linux rom with telemetry etc turned off.
  - fermienrico 8y ago
    Apple’s business model is not to sell your data. Apple’s business model is to sell you hardware. Google (Android) sell your data to the advertisers. You are totally mixing up open/closed source projects and business models.
- CaptSpify 8y ago
  > I think Apple leads in privacy How do you know that? Unless you have some special access to see the source, you are just taking their word on that.
  - simonh 8y ago
    Firstly in terms of market and brand perception Apple absolutely leads on privacy. That’s not really credibly contestable. Next even if the source was published there’s no way to know of the published source is what is in the phones they sell. This is just as true of an AOSP or any open source phone unless you literally audit the source and compile the whole stack from source yourself. However at least we have Apple on record and accountable, and it seems like their actual commercial interests align with their stated policies. Going with them seems like a reasonable risk to take, especially considering how poor we know for a fact most of their competition is in this regard.
    - CaptSpify 8y ago
      > Firstly in terms of market and brand perception Apple absolutely leads on privacy. That’s not really credibly contestable. I'd say it's highly contestable, especially since we have no actual direct proof that they do value privacy. Additionally, I don't care about brand perception, I care about reality. > Next even if the source was published there’s no way to know of the published source is what is in the phones they sell. So because they ship a poor OS that doesn't let you manage and control your own system means that there's no way to tell? Interesting, considering that a lot of other hardware works that way.... > This is just as true of an AOSP or any open source phone unless you literally audit the source and compile the whole stack from source yourself. A) So? What if I want to do that? B) The point of open-sourcing everything isn't so that everyone can audit everything everytime. It's so that we can audit when we need to. I would never buy a car that doens't let me pop the hood if I wanted to make modifications, why can't the same be true for Apple's products? > However at least we have Apple on record and accountable, and it seems like their actual commercial interests align with their stated policies. Their commercial interests actually align to look like they care about privacy, while actually double-dipping. Additionally, they still cater to governments. > Going with them seems like a reasonable risk to take, especially considering how poor we know for a fact most of their competition is in this regard. I completely agree that their competition is awful, but that doesn't in any way mean that Apple is good. In the end, none of what you said refutes my point: You are still reliant on Apple being honest.
- eafkuor 8y ago
  > Just to add to your conclusion, I think Apple leads in privacy. I just switched to an iPhone after 8 years of Android and I'm loving this aspect. And generally the phone seems to be more designed for humans compared to android. Also, the automatic do not disturb mode when I'm driving is great and I don't think I could go back to not having it. It's making me a better driver. Not that I was texting during driving, but not receiving notifications takes the phone out of my mind completely.
Symbiote 8y ago
Can't you return it to wherever you purchased it?
chrisper 8y ago
Weird. I have a P20 Pro and have no issues and I really like the hardware. The issue with unlocked bootloader is that Huawei doesn't provide their images online for download. If you put custom rom on it there is no way to go back to stock.

by adbge 8y ago

fermienrico 8y ago

Just to add to your conclusion, I think Apple leads in privacy. I would never buy a Chinese phone just from the fact that the Chinese government has a tremendous oversight and interference with large businesses. Yes, US has that issue with NSA but at least Apple stands against abuse of data privacy and has a firm ethetical stance to protect consumers data. I don’t trust Google for that matter. Edit: I feel like there is going to be what-about-tism responses. So, before you respond, ask yourself if you can criticize the Chinese government, protest against it and make a change in China. Last time that happened in Tiananmen square, there was massacre. That does not happen in US.

kodablah 8y ago
> Yes, US has that issue with NSA but at least Apple stands against abuse of data privacy and has a firm ethetical stance to protect consumers data. I don’t trust Google for that matter. I have the opposite feeling. Apple gladly hands over iCloud storage management to the Chinese (gladly meaning they won't make a statement even about whether they are happy about it), whereas I trust Google to keep my data on servers they own and are subject to their rules. Be careful about "stands against abuse" when what you mean is "stands against abuse sometimes". Also be careful about "firm ethical stance" when they choose not to confirm that stance in places where it is at odds with the law...not very firm I'd say. At the very least, I'll take the consistent company even if I dislike their data collection practices.
- fermienrico 8y ago
  Very good points, I think I concede with "stands against abuse" and "firm ethical stance". Apple will do whatever the board and the shareholders demand. I am mixing up ethics with business motivation. Apple - Good ethics, but tied to business performance. They cannot and will not exit China or go against the grain with the Chinese authorities. Google - Sells your data to advertisers, but has good ethical stance against authorities abusing data. Google doesn't operate in China since a decade or more I believe. They've somehow convinced the shareholders.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    It’s eady to “convince shareholders” when a negligible part of your revenue comes from China. So far this is just a rumor.... https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/1/17638480/google-china-search-engine-censored-report https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/1/17638480/google-china-sear...
- graeme 8y ago
  If you turn off icloud, then the iphone is still presumably quite secure in China, correct? I had assumed the android phones probably were breached by the chinese government, rendering data access superfluous in most cases. But I'm not especially well informed on the latter point beyond seeing articles like this one. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/tech-news/millions-of-android-apps-send-sensitive-data-to-china-u-of-t-report/article28865055/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/tech-news/million...
- ksec 8y ago
  Which is why I have been calling for an iOS Time Capsule. Especially for the Chinese Market. Instead Apple cared more about increasing their Services Revenue and push its user to iCloud. And before anyone said you could use iTunes to Backup, please consider 90% of users don't like touching their computer anymore. It is simply not an elegant solution. In an ideal world Cloud would be everything we wished for, No More BitFlip, Error, Drive Failure, Software Failure, Power Failure, File System Failure etc. But then it is very uneasy that government has all the data. Via iCloud Social Engineering, or Chinese Government forcing companies to give away those Data.
jeffbax 8y ago
Removing some things from the Chinese App Store like VPN, Apple absolutely leads on privacy, by miles. Who knows what is going into the software for 100% Chinese phones, and Google's new iMessage answer isn't even going to be encrypted, not to mention reports their mobile OS is already losing out on privacy features to the Ad team.
- fermienrico 8y ago
  I want to live in a world where businesses are formed based on the value they deliver to the consumer directly. Not siphoning the data and selling it to third parties. Ever growing advertisement and marketing needs/greed has created a universe of stuff around us that makes me ever so vigilant of companies selling me stuff for cheap and in turn selling me advertisements. In old days (before the internet), if I buy a PC from Apple or IBM, you get what you pay for. Besides the cable companies / newspapers / magazines bombarding ads, everything back in the day was 1:1 - you pay for something, you get value for it. Now a days, we have large companies losing money while killing competition (Uber), large companies in bed with government, and large companies in bed with advertisers and marketing agencies. Fuck the world. I can't wait to see Dieter Rams' documentary premier this October. From the trailers, it looks like it is addressing the very fabric of today's society than talking about industrial design. [1] I don't want to be a product. I want to be a loyal customer. [1] https://www.hustwit.com/rams/ https://www.hustwit.com/rams/
  - dijit 8y ago
    Argh. I hate to play devils advocate on this issue. Here goes: it seems like that model doesn’t work anymore. People look for what it costs on paper. You already here people talking about Apple as if it’s some impossible luxury standard. Can you imagine if computers became £5,000 for the base model again? I can’t imagine anyone paying for email in this day and age. And I certainly can’t imagine people paying for operating systems. Windows only has market dominance because it comes pre-installed and is effectively free. That’s the issue. If you’re competing in this market; then you’re competing with “free” from the consumers eyes.
    - 8y ago
robotresearcher 8y ago
Kent State is within living memory, lest we forget. Tiananmen Square massacre, 1989. Kent State massacre, 1970.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- DmenshunlAnlsis 8y ago
  There’s a difference, namely that you can say “Kent State” and look it up online, read about it in textbooks, see the newspaper articles, and discuss it online without fear. Try that with the Tiananmen Square massacre in China. Another difference is that four civilians died in Kent state, while 1022 died in Tiananmen Square. That’s three orders of magnitude difference, and why Kent State is typically called “Kent State Shootings” while Tiananmen Square was a “Massacre”. In fact an order of magnitude more policemen and military died in Tiananmen than overall fatalities at Kent State. They are not comparable. I’m fact more people died in Tiananmen than died protesting the entire Vietnam War in the US.
  - robotresearcher 8y ago
    No one claimed they were identical. Kent State is a simple counter example to the claim made in the parent comment.
    - simonh 8y ago
      Kent state was tragic, but not only is it not subject to pervasive and draconian state censorship, it also was not explicitly ordered as an intentional massacre by the government. That particular distinction really does matter.
      - robotresearcher 8y ago
        So it was a less bad massacre of protesters by government forces. Shall we forget about it, and claim it doesn’t happen here? Hell no.
e12e 8y ago
>> This is clearly a user hostile move: it makes it harder to load your own software on a device you purchased and, in my case, fix my own device. > Just to add to your conclusion, I think Apple leads in privacy. Its seems like a bit of a non-sequitor to go from an Android manufacturer that will (after an inconvenient interaction by email) allow you to run whatever code you want - to Apple - that doesn't allow anything of the kind? Fwiw I do think ios is leading in terms of off the shelf security on a device. But not really in terms of privacy vis-à-vis a custom Android/Linux rom with telemetry etc turned off.
- fermienrico 8y ago
  Apple’s business model is not to sell your data. Apple’s business model is to sell you hardware. Google (Android) sell your data to the advertisers. You are totally mixing up open/closed source projects and business models.
CaptSpify 8y ago
> I think Apple leads in privacy How do you know that? Unless you have some special access to see the source, you are just taking their word on that.
- simonh 8y ago
  Firstly in terms of market and brand perception Apple absolutely leads on privacy. That’s not really credibly contestable. Next even if the source was published there’s no way to know of the published source is what is in the phones they sell. This is just as true of an AOSP or any open source phone unless you literally audit the source and compile the whole stack from source yourself. However at least we have Apple on record and accountable, and it seems like their actual commercial interests align with their stated policies. Going with them seems like a reasonable risk to take, especially considering how poor we know for a fact most of their competition is in this regard.
  - CaptSpify 8y ago
    > Firstly in terms of market and brand perception Apple absolutely leads on privacy. That’s not really credibly contestable. I'd say it's highly contestable, especially since we have no actual direct proof that they do value privacy. Additionally, I don't care about brand perception, I care about reality. > Next even if the source was published there’s no way to know of the published source is what is in the phones they sell. So because they ship a poor OS that doesn't let you manage and control your own system means that there's no way to tell? Interesting, considering that a lot of other hardware works that way.... > This is just as true of an AOSP or any open source phone unless you literally audit the source and compile the whole stack from source yourself. A) So? What if I want to do that? B) The point of open-sourcing everything isn't so that everyone can audit everything everytime. It's so that we can audit when we need to. I would never buy a car that doens't let me pop the hood if I wanted to make modifications, why can't the same be true for Apple's products? > However at least we have Apple on record and accountable, and it seems like their actual commercial interests align with their stated policies. Their commercial interests actually align to look like they care about privacy, while actually double-dipping. Additionally, they still cater to governments. > Going with them seems like a reasonable risk to take, especially considering how poor we know for a fact most of their competition is in this regard. I completely agree that their competition is awful, but that doesn't in any way mean that Apple is good. In the end, none of what you said refutes my point: You are still reliant on Apple being honest.
eafkuor 8y ago
> Just to add to your conclusion, I think Apple leads in privacy. I just switched to an iPhone after 8 years of Android and I'm loving this aspect. And generally the phone seems to be more designed for humans compared to android. Also, the automatic do not disturb mode when I'm driving is great and I don't think I could go back to not having it. It's making me a better driver. Not that I was texting during driving, but not receiving notifications takes the phone out of my mind completely.

Symbiote 8y ago

Can't you return it to wherever you purchased it?

chrisper 8y ago

Weird. I have a P20 Pro and have no issues and I really like the hardware. The issue with unlocked bootloader is that Huawei doesn't provide their images online for download. If you put custom rom on it there is no way to go back to stock.