10 ms·

Xiaomi global bootloader unlock policy has changed

64 points by patrakov 2y ago

jdiez17 2y ago
I know it’s off topic but this post reeks of LLM-generated content. The itemized lists with bold two word headings are a dead giveaway.
- makemyworkforme 2y ago
  No.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- manbitesdog 2y ago
  Got the same impression, same "aligned" structures and constructions like "here’s what you might want to consider". Probably not fully LLM-generated, but definitely LLM """enhanced"""
- xmodem 2y ago
  It's unfortunate that we even have to have this discussion, but it doesn't read that way to me. The text is not quite...homogenous enough to have come from an LLM IMO.
- n144q 2y ago
  Yeah > The new policy signifies a key change in Xiaomi’s way of handling things and now raises several questions over how developers, enthusiasts, and other users will be affected. I don't know any human who speaks or writes like that. > Although not explained by Xiaomi officially, the following could be some of the reasons for this update. Likely LLM, but will give it a pass > Allowing a limited number of devices that one can unlock reduces for Xiaomi the possibility of misuse of an unlocked device by performing some unauthorized or potentially harmful activity. Exactly how ChatGPT would "enhance" your writing. > The new limit will indeed be a big problem, especially for those working with several devices for testing and development purposes. "a big problem" sounds too unprofessional for ChatGPT, and this part likely was revised by a human writer. > To the Community of Custom ROMs: This move will delay the development of third-party ROMs, kernels, and mods for Xiaomi devices. A confusing claim without any context/explanation/evidence? That's LLM.
  - makemyworkforme 2y ago
    It's a very common way to write in Indian English. What is probably happening here is that ChatGPT is trained in text over the internet and it is possible that there's lot more Indian English text on internet than others, and hence this effect.
xmodem 2y ago
How do they uniquely identify individual end users? In other words, is anything stopping me from creating a new account for each device I want to unlock?
- Mindwipe 2y ago
  They verify by phone number.
  - xmodem 2y ago
    Right. So the unlock cost is now the cost of a burner SIM at the convenience store, and a bunch of hassle.
    - Mindwipe 2y ago
      Burner SIMs are not as easy to come by in China, which is what they care about.
- yonatan8070 2y ago
  You need to sign in with a Xiaomi account to unlock devices, presumably they have similar spam protection to other big companies, IP addresses, device fingerprinting, etc.. So if you unlock a device from account A, then account B tries to unlock a device from the same computer/IP address, you'd be caught. Given the amount of users who actually bother to unlock their bootloader, I doubt you'd need more sophisticated duplicate account detection
plingbang 2y ago
I found a wall of shame that includes manufacturers that make it hard or impossible to unlock the bootloader[1]. It was mentioned in a forum post[2]. [1]: https://github.com/melontini/bootloader-unlock-wall-of-shame https://github.com/melontini/bootloader-unlock-wall-of-shame [2]: https://xdaforums.com/t/future-of-unlocking-bootloaders-in-android-smartphones.4705741/ https://xdaforums.com/t/future-of-unlocking-bootloaders-in-a...
BLKNSLVR 2y ago
As an end-user having my last four phones as Xiaomi's that get upgraded to LineageOS upon their replacement as the primary phone, this affects me in an indirect fashion: I bought Xiaomi's because they were popular for custom ROMs, and their popularity was based on decent hardware for a decent price with a boot loader that's unlockable without too much hassle. Once the bootloader unlock becomes a hassle, fewer developers will want to touch them, so their popularity for hobbyists will decline, therefore their sales will decline, leading to even further decreasing popularity amongst developers. It'll be interesting to see how much difference it makes to sales, but Xiaomi will no longer be a preferred brand for me to consider. Pixels seem to be great for custom ROM compatibility, but they're ridiculously expensive even on the second hand market. Motorola might be the new go-to.
- karambanoonoo 2y ago
  But they don't make LOS for new Xiaomi phones for a long time now, though? Unless you want some shady rom made by some rando from xda.
  - BLKNSLVR 2y ago
    I have one with "Pixel Experience" and one with 'PixelOS". Both of which, by my understanding, are built on top of unofficial Lineage OS releases - but I might be way off base.
    - patrakov 2y ago
      Pixel Experience was not based on LineageOS. And Pixel Experience is dead and unsupported now. While there is no official direct successor, EvolutionX offers a comparable feature set.
- arresin 2y ago
  It’s one per year and the stated reasons are fair enough. Even if you get a new phone every year it’s business as usual.
  - 2y ago
jdietrich 2y ago
For context, Xiaomi first implemented this policy to combat a plague of devices that were being sold at retail with malware preinstalled. In the middle-income markets that Xiaomi considers home turf, a large proportion of phones are bought from independent retailers rather than major chains, so Xiaomi have limited control over the onward supply chain. While this policy might seem like a pointless annoyance to the kind of person who installs custom ROMs on their phone, it's a careful attempt to balance the freedoms of power users against the security of ordinary users.
- BLKNSLVR 2y ago
  And if the existing restriction to three devices per year didn't stop it, how is reducing it by two going to make a difference? (and maybe it will, but I don't see it)
  - sidewndr46 2y ago
    individuals will now have to use ChatGPT to get suggestions about how to unlock Xiaomi devices with some tool that was stolen from Xiaomi by hacking them
- est 2y ago
  Chinese users root their device and damage the wifi via software instructions for a refund. Happened during the Mi 11 series However I do think phone companies should allow root after warranty expires.
apatheticonion 2y ago
I feel like governments should enforce unlocked bootloaders on consumer devices. If I want to install a different OS on my phone, TV, fridge, whatever, I should be allowed to
- plagiarist 2y ago
  This would be great for individuals but bad for companies' revenue streams.
  - apatheticonion 2y ago
    Such is the nature of pro-consumer & competition-enabling legislation. There's so much I already know my devices are fully capable of but they are artificially nerfed and likely only because it would empower competitive products emerging.
MarkusWandel 2y ago
Don't Chromebooks already do a nag on every boot if they're unlocked? Why not do it on phones too? It's not like they get rebooted very often. That would totally combat the "compromised phone sold as clean" issue.
- tricked 2y ago
  my redmi note 9 has a small icon with a unlocked lock in the top middle on boot not much compared to a pixel though.
- fulafel 2y ago
  Yep, lots of phones do this and in big scary letters.
- BLKNSLVR 2y ago
  Upon boot my custom ROM'd Xiaomi's give a five second warning page telling me the bootloader is unlocked, so, yeah, it's not hidden. There may be ways to suppress that though.
  - MarkusWandel 2y ago
    So that means that the stated reason for further rate-limiting boot loader unlocks (to prevent unlocked, compromised phones from being sold as clean) is BS.
- squarefoot 2y ago
  Don't know about Chromebooks; I have some Chromeboxes, all unlocked, and all of them show the Coreboot splash screen before booting but no nags or warning signs. My Pixel7, however, since installing GrapheneOS shows a very detailed screen on boot indicating the operating system has been swapped. not a problem for me, but surely It'd raise alerts if I wanted to sell the phone. So it's not like phone manufacturers lack ways of telling the user that something happened. To me it's just the old security by obscurity mentality paired with greed: a lighter and open OS on the phone translates in less user data being exfiltrated, longer device life and potentially fewer sales of newer phones.
aucisson_masque 2y ago
Anyway allowing to unlock the bootloader without providing the updated and complete kernel source code is useless for ROM development. That's what they do with most of their device, I don't think there is much lineage os official support for the recent phone (3-4 years old) and the unofficial are made from patched kernel with a little bit of code from a phone, a little bit from another, etc. Xiaomi was and is pretty much dead for rom development, i don't know who keep repeating that online but they obviously haven't been paying much attention.
- ChocolateGod 2y ago
  The Galaxy S24 is a popular phone that has a very easy to unlock bootloader and published kernel sources, yet next to zero ROM development. The SafetyNet war is over, Google won and custom ROMs now just make you loose too much.
  - aucisson_masque 2y ago
    I believe it's also a lack of desire for custom rom. Years ago, most manufacturers rom were atrocious so you would flash custom ones but nowadays beside the few Chinese one, most things are 'good enough'. Especially with Samsung one UI, what more could a custom rom bring than oneui doesn't already has? It's much more active with Chinese phone because their system looks like half ass copy of iOS, and on pixel because you can get grapheneos and others but that's all. Google didn't need to lock things up, they just needed manufacturer rom to be good enough.
informal007 2y ago
On the one hand, Xiaomi is enough popular to do such kind of good thing to attract attention for geeks. On the other hand, this can reduce the risk of fraud and cost of anti-fraud, especially when cost of phone is becoming lower and lower.
xvilka 2y ago
The biggest problem with Xiaomi's original ROMs is the crazy amount of ads. And they don't even offer a subscription-based business model to avoid them. The hardware is good these days, but the software is not.
- ChocolateGod 2y ago
  The official EU ROMs ship without ads
  - misstuned 2y ago
    I'm in Europe and had endless ads on my Xiaomi phone - normally for Xiaomi crap, like themes and games. I actively had to go in and turn off notifications for various Mi apps to stop them pestering me with notifications several times a day, but there are still full-screen ad interruptions in the stock apps like the file manager and notepad. My Redmi Note 13 Pro Plus is nowhere near as good as my last Xiaomi - the ads seem to have increased, and the battery life has gone to shit after <1 year of usage. I won't get another.
    - ChocolateGod 2y ago
      Did you import from China? I had an Xiaomi 14 for a little bit with the EEA ROM and had zero ads.
ChocolateGod 2y ago
Is it me or does this blogs content seem AI generated?
matthewbenson 2y ago
The old one device policy
jaidan 2y ago
Look on the bright side. Locking bootloaders has the potential to break the duopoly by driving more people towards Linux phones or other unlocked devices. The more people that move, the stronger those communities get. I've been daily driving a Furi for 3 months now and am glad to have options outside of the duopoly.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
coldblues 2y ago
In addition to this, Google is phasing out device integrity check to the Play Integrity API, which will completely kill custom ROMs if apps adopt it, which bank apps most likely will, because their entire security is based on box-checking.
phh 2y ago
I'm a custom ROM developer that spans a lot of devices (TrebleDroid GSI, a generic kind of custom ROM that works on thousands of Android devices) I've bought dozens of smartphones to implement bug fixes (current total number is 50). I used to buy Xiaomi devices, because there are a lot of users (lots of bugs to fix), and often have brand new SoC at affordable price early. But I've stopped buying Xiaomi for a few years now, because of the low reliability, high complexity of Xiaomi's bootloader unlock, and the rules keep changing. So far it looks like the community of people using Xiaomi devices with custom ROM is still pretty strong, so it's not necessarily a bad idea to buy Xiaomi. But I very strongly recommend that you unlock bootloader right after buying your device [1], because buying a device now and expecting to be able to unlock it in 4 years look too optimistic to me. [1] Though you'll most likely won't be able to "just" unlock and forget it, because of all the apps that really really really want you to run Xiaomi and Google adwares and not your own OS
- lostmsu 2y ago
  What are your preferred devices now?
em-bee 2y ago
i can easily get another sim card to get around the limit as an end user. this only affects people who want to buy devices en masse and would have to get a sim card each. and even that is not that hard if you compare the cost of a sim to the cost of a phone. the annoying thing about xiaomi unlocking is the random wait time. when my mother visited a few years ago, i got her her first smartphone that i wanted to install /e/OS on. i remembered my own wait time was a week, so i figured i'd have enough time while my mom was here. when i started the unock process i realized that the wait time was randomized and this time i got two weeks. luckily that still left me one day before my mother had to leave so i managed, but if the wait time would have been just a few days more i would have been unable to set up the phone for her.

64 points by patrakov 2y ago

I know it’s off topic but this post reeks of LLM-generated content. The itemized lists with bold two word headings are a dead giveaway.

makemyworkforme 2y ago
No.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
manbitesdog 2y ago
Got the same impression, same "aligned" structures and constructions like "here’s what you might want to consider". Probably not fully LLM-generated, but definitely LLM """enhanced"""
xmodem 2y ago
It's unfortunate that we even have to have this discussion, but it doesn't read that way to me. The text is not quite...homogenous enough to have come from an LLM IMO.
n144q 2y ago
Yeah > The new policy signifies a key change in Xiaomi’s way of handling things and now raises several questions over how developers, enthusiasts, and other users will be affected. I don't know any human who speaks or writes like that. > Although not explained by Xiaomi officially, the following could be some of the reasons for this update. Likely LLM, but will give it a pass > Allowing a limited number of devices that one can unlock reduces for Xiaomi the possibility of misuse of an unlocked device by performing some unauthorized or potentially harmful activity. Exactly how ChatGPT would "enhance" your writing. > The new limit will indeed be a big problem, especially for those working with several devices for testing and development purposes. "a big problem" sounds too unprofessional for ChatGPT, and this part likely was revised by a human writer. > To the Community of Custom ROMs: This move will delay the development of third-party ROMs, kernels, and mods for Xiaomi devices. A confusing claim without any context/explanation/evidence? That's LLM.
- makemyworkforme 2y ago
  It's a very common way to write in Indian English. What is probably happening here is that ChatGPT is trained in text over the internet and it is possible that there's lot more Indian English text on internet than others, and hence this effect.

xmodem 2y ago

How do they uniquely identify individual end users? In other words, is anything stopping me from creating a new account for each device I want to unlock?

Mindwipe 2y ago
They verify by phone number.
- xmodem 2y ago
  Right. So the unlock cost is now the cost of a burner SIM at the convenience store, and a bunch of hassle.
  - Mindwipe 2y ago
    Burner SIMs are not as easy to come by in China, which is what they care about.
yonatan8070 2y ago
You need to sign in with a Xiaomi account to unlock devices, presumably they have similar spam protection to other big companies, IP addresses, device fingerprinting, etc.. So if you unlock a device from account A, then account B tries to unlock a device from the same computer/IP address, you'd be caught. Given the amount of users who actually bother to unlock their bootloader, I doubt you'd need more sophisticated duplicate account detection

plingbang 2y ago

I found a wall of shame that includes manufacturers that make it hard or impossible to unlock the bootloader[1]. It was mentioned in a forum post[2]. [1]: https://github.com/melontini/bootloader-unlock-wall-of-shame https://github.com/melontini/bootloader-unlock-wall-of-shame [2]: https://xdaforums.com/t/future-of-unlocking-bootloaders-in-android-smartphones.4705741/ https://xdaforums.com/t/future-of-unlocking-bootloaders-in-a...

BLKNSLVR 2y ago

As an end-user having my last four phones as Xiaomi's that get upgraded to LineageOS upon their replacement as the primary phone, this affects me in an indirect fashion: I bought Xiaomi's because they were popular for custom ROMs, and their popularity was based on decent hardware for a decent price with a boot loader that's unlockable without too much hassle. Once the bootloader unlock becomes a hassle, fewer developers will want to touch them, so their popularity for hobbyists will decline, therefore their sales will decline, leading to even further decreasing popularity amongst developers. It'll be interesting to see how much difference it makes to sales, but Xiaomi will no longer be a preferred brand for me to consider. Pixels seem to be great for custom ROM compatibility, but they're ridiculously expensive even on the second hand market. Motorola might be the new go-to.

karambanoonoo 2y ago
But they don't make LOS for new Xiaomi phones for a long time now, though? Unless you want some shady rom made by some rando from xda.
- BLKNSLVR 2y ago
  I have one with "Pixel Experience" and one with 'PixelOS". Both of which, by my understanding, are built on top of unofficial Lineage OS releases - but I might be way off base.
  - patrakov 2y ago
    Pixel Experience was not based on LineageOS. And Pixel Experience is dead and unsupported now. While there is no official direct successor, EvolutionX offers a comparable feature set.
arresin 2y ago
It’s one per year and the stated reasons are fair enough. Even if you get a new phone every year it’s business as usual.
- 2y ago

jdietrich 2y ago

For context, Xiaomi first implemented this policy to combat a plague of devices that were being sold at retail with malware preinstalled. In the middle-income markets that Xiaomi considers home turf, a large proportion of phones are bought from independent retailers rather than major chains, so Xiaomi have limited control over the onward supply chain. While this policy might seem like a pointless annoyance to the kind of person who installs custom ROMs on their phone, it's a careful attempt to balance the freedoms of power users against the security of ordinary users.

BLKNSLVR 2y ago
And if the existing restriction to three devices per year didn't stop it, how is reducing it by two going to make a difference? (and maybe it will, but I don't see it)
- sidewndr46 2y ago
  individuals will now have to use ChatGPT to get suggestions about how to unlock Xiaomi devices with some tool that was stolen from Xiaomi by hacking them
est 2y ago
Chinese users root their device and damage the wifi via software instructions for a refund. Happened during the Mi 11 series However I do think phone companies should allow root after warranty expires.

apatheticonion 2y ago

I feel like governments should enforce unlocked bootloaders on consumer devices. If I want to install a different OS on my phone, TV, fridge, whatever, I should be allowed to

plagiarist 2y ago
This would be great for individuals but bad for companies' revenue streams.
- apatheticonion 2y ago
  Such is the nature of pro-consumer & competition-enabling legislation. There's so much I already know my devices are fully capable of but they are artificially nerfed and likely only because it would empower competitive products emerging.

MarkusWandel 2y ago

Don't Chromebooks already do a nag on every boot if they're unlocked? Why not do it on phones too? It's not like they get rebooted very often. That would totally combat the "compromised phone sold as clean" issue.

tricked 2y ago
my redmi note 9 has a small icon with a unlocked lock in the top middle on boot not much compared to a pixel though.
fulafel 2y ago
Yep, lots of phones do this and in big scary letters.
BLKNSLVR 2y ago
Upon boot my custom ROM'd Xiaomi's give a five second warning page telling me the bootloader is unlocked, so, yeah, it's not hidden. There may be ways to suppress that though.
- MarkusWandel 2y ago
  So that means that the stated reason for further rate-limiting boot loader unlocks (to prevent unlocked, compromised phones from being sold as clean) is BS.
squarefoot 2y ago
Don't know about Chromebooks; I have some Chromeboxes, all unlocked, and all of them show the Coreboot splash screen before booting but no nags or warning signs. My Pixel7, however, since installing GrapheneOS shows a very detailed screen on boot indicating the operating system has been swapped. not a problem for me, but surely It'd raise alerts if I wanted to sell the phone. So it's not like phone manufacturers lack ways of telling the user that something happened. To me it's just the old security by obscurity mentality paired with greed: a lighter and open OS on the phone translates in less user data being exfiltrated, longer device life and potentially fewer sales of newer phones.

aucisson_masque 2y ago

Anyway allowing to unlock the bootloader without providing the updated and complete kernel source code is useless for ROM development. That's what they do with most of their device, I don't think there is much lineage os official support for the recent phone (3-4 years old) and the unofficial are made from patched kernel with a little bit of code from a phone, a little bit from another, etc. Xiaomi was and is pretty much dead for rom development, i don't know who keep repeating that online but they obviously haven't been paying much attention.

ChocolateGod 2y ago
The Galaxy S24 is a popular phone that has a very easy to unlock bootloader and published kernel sources, yet next to zero ROM development. The SafetyNet war is over, Google won and custom ROMs now just make you loose too much.
- aucisson_masque 2y ago
  I believe it's also a lack of desire for custom rom. Years ago, most manufacturers rom were atrocious so you would flash custom ones but nowadays beside the few Chinese one, most things are 'good enough'. Especially with Samsung one UI, what more could a custom rom bring than oneui doesn't already has? It's much more active with Chinese phone because their system looks like half ass copy of iOS, and on pixel because you can get grapheneos and others but that's all. Google didn't need to lock things up, they just needed manufacturer rom to be good enough.

informal007 2y ago

On the one hand, Xiaomi is enough popular to do such kind of good thing to attract attention for geeks. On the other hand, this can reduce the risk of fraud and cost of anti-fraud, especially when cost of phone is becoming lower and lower.

xvilka 2y ago

The biggest problem with Xiaomi's original ROMs is the crazy amount of ads. And they don't even offer a subscription-based business model to avoid them. The hardware is good these days, but the software is not.

ChocolateGod 2y ago
The official EU ROMs ship without ads
- misstuned 2y ago
  I'm in Europe and had endless ads on my Xiaomi phone - normally for Xiaomi crap, like themes and games. I actively had to go in and turn off notifications for various Mi apps to stop them pestering me with notifications several times a day, but there are still full-screen ad interruptions in the stock apps like the file manager and notepad. My Redmi Note 13 Pro Plus is nowhere near as good as my last Xiaomi - the ads seem to have increased, and the battery life has gone to shit after <1 year of usage. I won't get another.
  - ChocolateGod 2y ago
    Did you import from China? I had an Xiaomi 14 for a little bit with the EEA ROM and had zero ads.

ChocolateGod 2y ago

Is it me or does this blogs content seem AI generated?

matthewbenson 2y ago

The old one device policy

jaidan 2y ago

Look on the bright side. Locking bootloaders has the potential to break the duopoly by driving more people towards Linux phones or other unlocked devices. The more people that move, the stronger those communities get. I've been daily driving a Furi for 3 months now and am glad to have options outside of the duopoly.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

coldblues 2y ago

In addition to this, Google is phasing out device integrity check to the Play Integrity API, which will completely kill custom ROMs if apps adopt it, which bank apps most likely will, because their entire security is based on box-checking.

phh 2y ago

I'm a custom ROM developer that spans a lot of devices (TrebleDroid GSI, a generic kind of custom ROM that works on thousands of Android devices) I've bought dozens of smartphones to implement bug fixes (current total number is 50). I used to buy Xiaomi devices, because there are a lot of users (lots of bugs to fix), and often have brand new SoC at affordable price early. But I've stopped buying Xiaomi for a few years now, because of the low reliability, high complexity of Xiaomi's bootloader unlock, and the rules keep changing. So far it looks like the community of people using Xiaomi devices with custom ROM is still pretty strong, so it's not necessarily a bad idea to buy Xiaomi. But I very strongly recommend that you unlock bootloader right after buying your device [1], because buying a device now and expecting to be able to unlock it in 4 years look too optimistic to me. [1] Though you'll most likely won't be able to "just" unlock and forget it, because of all the apps that really really really want you to run Xiaomi and Google adwares and not your own OS

lostmsu 2y ago
What are your preferred devices now?

em-bee 2y ago

i can easily get another sim card to get around the limit as an end user. this only affects people who want to buy devices en masse and would have to get a sim card each. and even that is not that hard if you compare the cost of a sim to the cost of a phone. the annoying thing about xiaomi unlocking is the random wait time. when my mother visited a few years ago, i got her her first smartphone that i wanted to install /e/OS on. i remembered my own wait time was a week, so i figured i'd have enough time while my mom was here. when i started the unock process i realized that the wait time was randomized and this time i got two weeks. luckily that still left me one day before my mother had to leave so i managed, but if the wait time would have been just a few days more i would have been unable to set up the phone for her.