4 ms·

Xiaomi produces one of the best bang for your bucks hardware in the market. Their software is crap though. Ads in the system apps, ui customization that arguabl

Xiaomi produces one of the best bang for your bucks hardware in the market. Their software is crap though. Ads in the system apps, ui customization that arguably looks worse than stock android, and now blanket tracking like this, though it was always pinging their tracking servers frequently. My pihole logs pretty much full with blocked xiaomi requests until I flashed the phone. Best thing to do when you got an android phone, especially from a chinese manufacturer, is to flash LineageOS on it.

tastroder 7y ago
Is that a recent thing? My Xiaomi Mi A1 ran Android One that gets official updates to this day, as far as I could tell it was pretty stock and the data collection in their "Mi Services" could be disabled in the settings UI, so not unlike pretty much any cheap manufacturer.
- neurostimulant 7y ago
  Mi A1 is probably an exception as it's part of Android One program. The rest of xiaomi lineups are using their miui rom which contains ads and tracking mentioned in the article.
brnt 7y ago
LineageOS (and a few other Android distros) are the only mobile OSes I trust and use. Not any different with laptops and desktops BTW: I don't trust any preinstalled OS and not any distro for which I can't browse the source.
raindropm 7y ago
Problem is lately many banking app required you to use non-root phone, at least in my country. There used to be workaround, but it is not work anymore. I have Redmi phone and I hates it as soon as I found that there is ads in their rom. It's so disappointing. I mean, other Chinese brand have their own crapware yes, but ads? I then flash my phone to pure Pixel rom and never been happier, until the bank app incident happened. So I have to use their original rom for now until I get a new phone. No matter how rave the Mi phone review be, or how it is great 'bang for the bucks' brand, I will never touch their phone again.
- neurostimulant 7y ago
  Actually, I installed LineageOS but skip installing root binary (it's an optional step when flashing LineageOS) as I don't need root anymore. Without root I can still use my banking app because Google safetynet is passing on my phone.
  - raindropm 7y ago
    Interesting. I'll check out some more information about it.
  - cJ0th 7y ago
    I use LinageOS myself but I would never use a smartphone for anything related to personal finance. Without an extensive research project there is no telling what's going on under the hood imho.
    - propogandist 7y ago
      Most banking apps have extensive telemetry enabled themselves. Even keyboards are trying to phone home constantly
  - blaser-waffle 7y ago
    There are ways to get around safetynet, though it's a cat-and-mouse game of "detect the root".
- cobookman 7y ago
  Wow, didn't realize android got that bad recently. Makes me not want to leave the iPhone ecosystem. The only benefit Android had was the control. You take that away and make it a walled garden, its just an iPhone...but worse
  - raindropm 7y ago
    I like overall quality of iOS but I still prefer Android though, you can do all sort of weird things iOS never allow. Just next time I'll choose whatever phones that gives me vanilla Android(as much as possible) Pure android is clean and work great, until vendor try to 'enhance' their phone with their apps and stuff.
nirui 7y ago
Ha! As a Chinese myself, when I buying a new phone, the first thing I do is to Google whether or not the phone can load custom ROM. Buying a phone that allows custom ROM is really beneficial. Not just it gives you more fre<Censored>edom and choose, it can also expand the lifespan of the device and thus save you a bit of money. A side note: Fairphone looked quite nice, but that €450 price tag pushed me out far far away :(
gentleman11 7y ago
WRT “bang for the buck”: you have to take the whole picture into account, not just cpu speed/battery life plus price. Taken as a whole, it has a negative bang for the buck Also curious: can you trust the hardware even if you do flash lineageOS? Honestly curious
- neurostimulant 7y ago
  That's depend your threat model, isn't it? All Android phones rely on black box baseband blobs from the hardware manufacturers. If there is an exploit hidden there, I believe they won't use it just for blanket data collection like this, but only use it for targeted attacks on high value targets (politicians, journalists, magacorp execs, etc). Hopefully they won't bother to use that kind of low level exploits on normal plebs like me. I'm not even sure if iPhones are safe enough when your threat model requires trusting the low level hardware. The only way to avoid it is by using a phone with fully trusted stacks like pine phone or librem 5.

tastroder 7y ago

Is that a recent thing? My Xiaomi Mi A1 ran Android One that gets official updates to this day, as far as I could tell it was pretty stock and the data collection in their "Mi Services" could be disabled in the settings UI, so not unlike pretty much any cheap manufacturer.

neurostimulant 7y ago
Mi A1 is probably an exception as it's part of Android One program. The rest of xiaomi lineups are using their miui rom which contains ads and tracking mentioned in the article.

brnt 7y ago

LineageOS (and a few other Android distros) are the only mobile OSes I trust and use. Not any different with laptops and desktops BTW: I don't trust any preinstalled OS and not any distro for which I can't browse the source.

raindropm 7y ago

Problem is lately many banking app required you to use non-root phone, at least in my country. There used to be workaround, but it is not work anymore. I have Redmi phone and I hates it as soon as I found that there is ads in their rom. It's so disappointing. I mean, other Chinese brand have their own crapware yes, but ads? I then flash my phone to pure Pixel rom and never been happier, until the bank app incident happened. So I have to use their original rom for now until I get a new phone. No matter how rave the Mi phone review be, or how it is great 'bang for the bucks' brand, I will never touch their phone again.

neurostimulant 7y ago
Actually, I installed LineageOS but skip installing root binary (it's an optional step when flashing LineageOS) as I don't need root anymore. Without root I can still use my banking app because Google safetynet is passing on my phone.
- raindropm 7y ago
  Interesting. I'll check out some more information about it.
- cJ0th 7y ago
  I use LinageOS myself but I would never use a smartphone for anything related to personal finance. Without an extensive research project there is no telling what's going on under the hood imho.
  - propogandist 7y ago
    Most banking apps have extensive telemetry enabled themselves. Even keyboards are trying to phone home constantly
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  There are ways to get around safetynet, though it's a cat-and-mouse game of "detect the root".
cobookman 7y ago
Wow, didn't realize android got that bad recently. Makes me not want to leave the iPhone ecosystem. The only benefit Android had was the control. You take that away and make it a walled garden, its just an iPhone...but worse
- raindropm 7y ago
  I like overall quality of iOS but I still prefer Android though, you can do all sort of weird things iOS never allow. Just next time I'll choose whatever phones that gives me vanilla Android(as much as possible) Pure android is clean and work great, until vendor try to 'enhance' their phone with their apps and stuff.

nirui 7y ago

Ha! As a Chinese myself, when I buying a new phone, the first thing I do is to Google whether or not the phone can load custom ROM. Buying a phone that allows custom ROM is really beneficial. Not just it gives you more fre<Censored>edom and choose, it can also expand the lifespan of the device and thus save you a bit of money. A side note: Fairphone looked quite nice, but that €450 price tag pushed me out far far away :(

gentleman11 7y ago

WRT “bang for the buck”: you have to take the whole picture into account, not just cpu speed/battery life plus price. Taken as a whole, it has a negative bang for the buck Also curious: can you trust the hardware even if you do flash lineageOS? Honestly curious

neurostimulant 7y ago
That's depend your threat model, isn't it? All Android phones rely on black box baseband blobs from the hardware manufacturers. If there is an exploit hidden there, I believe they won't use it just for blanket data collection like this, but only use it for targeted attacks on high value targets (politicians, journalists, magacorp execs, etc). Hopefully they won't bother to use that kind of low level exploits on normal plebs like me. I'm not even sure if iPhones are safe enough when your threat model requires trusting the low level hardware. The only way to avoid it is by using a phone with fully trusted stacks like pine phone or librem 5.