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Every Xiaomi phone I had started with a variation of the regular Android first start wizard. I suppose this is a kind of activation. These were supposed to be u
by morsch 5y ago
Every Xiaomi phone I had started with a variation of the regular Android first start wizard. I suppose this is a kind of activation. These were supposed to be unmodified, original devices.
I say this because you can also buy modified devices, for instances Chinese devices that have been reflashed with an international ROM. If it booted without a wizard, you probably had one of these devices. Xiaomi always hated this, I'm not sure why, though a benign explanation is that sometimes these devices are said to come with malware pre-installed, and that's not a good look for Xiaomi (who like all Android manufacturers wants an exclusive right to install their own malware). This is one of the reasons unlocking the bootloader is rate limited and comes with a wait time.
- ctde 5y agothere is another possible, more charitable explanation for the wait period for device unlocking: as a cooldown period to help people avoid being scammed into unlocking their phones
- morsch 5y agoWas that a common scam before the cooldown?
- rfoo 5y agoI don't think so. OTOH what GP described (reseller earn money by batch unlocking phone and pre-installing not uninstall-able apps/malwares before selling to consumers) is very common some time ago. China is wild.
- MomoXenosaga 5y ago"uninstall-able apps/malwares before selling to consumers" Isn't this what American mobile operators do?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- em-bee 5y agoto add to that: in order to unlock, you need to register with your phonenumber and the wait time is a random interval of a few days to a few weeks. i think you can unlock one phone per month per registered phone number. this is done expressly with the intent to prevent mass unlocking by 3rd party resellers.