Hacker News Reader

Comment by grishka | Hacker News Reader

Xiaomi is able to make their phones so cheap by making their software as crappy as possible. They collect a lot of data (yes, their calculator app has a privacy policy) and sometimes show ads. You need a Xiaomi account to enable debugging (adb).

Though they're still immensely popular here in Russia.

View on HN

> You need a Xiaomi account to enable debugging (adb).

Just unlock and root the thing as soon as you get it and Xiaomi will not get any data - either put LineageOS on it or de-fang MIUI by removing the nasty bits. Don't use the phone with a logged-in Mi account, the only valid reason for using the Mi account is to get the unlock code. Once unlocked and rooted you can remove nearly all the Mi-account-related parts from the phone as well as the ad-related APKs. If you happen to disable debugging over USB (adb) you can re-enable it without using a Mi account (in a terminal, use root):

   setprop persist.security.adbinput 1
   setprop persist.security.adbinstall 1

Open /data/data/com.miui.securitycenter/shared_prefs/remote_provider_preferences.xml in an editor and add <boolean name="security_adb_install_enable" value="true" /> before the closing </map> tag. Reboot the device and voila, adb works again.

...or just install LineageOS and be done with it, you'll probably end up doing this anyway so why wait?

It doesn't help if you're an app developer. All you can do is to keep hacking around Xiaomi's bugs because the users sure won't install LineageOS. The part about preventing adb is just icing on the cake. The nice part is that unlike with Samsung, the users know that they're buying crap and often don't really expect apps to work.

In my experience they do expect them to work and complain the loudest. And then there's Meizu. No idea what it's like now, but ~5 years ago they meddled with the system framework enough to make my app crash. We had to buy one of those phones and I then decompiled their POS ROM to work around this madness. I had to ask myself "how on earth did this pass Google's CTS" multiple times, and the answer apparently was "it never did".

I hadn't even heard about Meizu before. Just the ad copy "Better Android Experience" sounds like it's going to be non-standard in everything it does.

If you have root, you could as well remount /system read-write and delete that "security center" crap altogether.

All their apps are privacy nightmares. I have a MI Note 4 and MIUI is still buttery smooth after all these years. Before this I used to have Samsung's flagship phones. The UI got laggy and slow after a few years. Compared to that MIUI is nice.

Even with Android One phones?

so no account > no adb > no root, right ?

You also need an account to unlock the bootloader.

Their sourcing and labor practices possibly save a dollar or two

https://knowthechain.org/wp-content/uploads/2020_KTC_ICT_Sco...

That seems to be an empty report.

"engaged with knowthechain: No"

So, basically they got no data, and had to assume the worst.

I'm sympathetic with Knowthechain: they don't have an easy job, they have to be able to reach out to any company in the world and get an answer...

But I also think that this doesn't mean much.

I'm honestly confused why you linked a data sheet that practically has no data.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com