Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro: flagship features at half the price

Instructions are usually pretty clear (eg. XDA posts for ROM releases or LineageOS wiki pages are usually quite clear, the latter being more than the former IMO). It might be harder, but usually laypeople can get by (eg. aren't particularly knowledgeable but perhaps aren't afraid of using the command line either, even if it's just copypasting). At least that's the impression I get from people posting on XDA.

Either way, I can usually flash ROMs without issue (I don't know a lot about Android but I do understand how my computer works, I guess), but when I do it I usually get incredibly nervous and panicky out of fear that I'll brick my phone or I forgot to back up something important.

Well, the fitness band didn't have its firmware flashed. that's not where the tracking is anyway. It's a different app being used to collect the data.

Recent models of many Xiaomi bands require an authorization code that must be taken from an existing account that has linked with the watch. If someone's skilled enough to run a python script they can get the code and install Gadgetbridge.

Tracking for mi band is in the android app rather than the band itself. All you need to do is replace it with a more privacy focused app.

IMO, the risk of a hardware backdoor is always there and perhaps less damaging if the country is across the world, depending on the threat model and damage model.

realistically you're right, and I probably would deeply consider my options before thinking about it. But we can go down the list of lower and lower firmware that we cant verify (hell, I just reread Reflections on Trusting Trust this morning). Every device has Chinese-made chips. I suppose it's more risky than an American company but to me it seems like rearranging chairs on a sinking ship, which is why I never keep anything sensitive on my phone.

> If you re going to be paranoid, because you attack children or sell drugs, why the hell do you buy phones in the first place !?

While the rest of your comment is accurate, this is disingenuous. There are plenty of valid reasons to have concerns over this besides those drilled by the powers that be.

Besides, it's still reasonable to want to reduce your potential attack surface. Sure, federal agencies may root you if they really want but that doesn't mean it's pointless to avoid OS-level preinstalled backdoors from the manufacturer.

> If you re going to be paranoid, because you attack children or sell drugs, why the hell do you buy phones in the first place !?

If you are going to joke, kindly mark it, so we do not misunderstand you, and so you do not cause internal damages to those who are not trained to always keep neurovegetative and limbic on guard while reading - you know, that occasional moment in which you trust what you read and the physiological reactions start, before the prefrontal goes "wait a moment, that may be not serious".

People have

-- a privacy to defend as a principle («privacy to defend», what times!),

-- absurdity to keep at bay (interrobangs have a cost - the paragraph above is relevant),

-- security to ensure (information which ends up in weakly protected repositories is basically public),

-- safety to strengthen (sociopolitical systems can make people pay for any minor trait)

and more?

What firewall do you use?

> If you re going to be paranoid, because you attack children or sell drugs, why the hell do you buy phones in the first place !?

Because innocent people can be persecuted too. Just ask many of the ethnic groups across the globe, or other abuse victims.

Privacy protects innocent people from criminals, more than it protects criminals from the good guys.

Apart from fighting political dissidents, tracking is used for targeted ads, i.e., to force you to buy staff you don't need. Many people are not fine with psycological manipulation.

yeah, just adding a note that this is the software

While you can get it to kinda "work", it's never really very stable and results just aren't as good because the ML algorithms are trained on the exact sensor/optics used by the Pixels.

I believe they meant the latter

try to disable "youtube" or "googly play music" or "google assistant" or those pesky xiaomi/realme/samsung bloatware. the custom roms do not support disabling most "system apps" which are possible in stock android as is on my phone

Geez... those phones are beasts.

It's incredible how all phones are coming along these days. It seems to be easier for other companies to get into phone manufacturing, I just hope more of them get into FOSS.

Seconded (& I recommended them to the author of the piece, who didn't listen. :-D )

I have an Umidigi F2, with a 38MP camera, 6GB RAM, 128GB flash, big retina screen -- I neither know nor care the rez -- and a huge battery. It lasted 3 days of intensive use when new, it has a headphone socket and both dual SIM + µSD card slots, and it was an astonishing €125 new.

And a totally vanilla Android 10 install that even says it's a Pixel in a couple of places.

I'd rather have a ~£150 phone I can replace every 2 years than a ~£300 phone that has to last ~4 years, but others' mileage varies, of course. Including David's.

This is my 3rd cheapo Chinese phone and I've been very happy with all of them.

The 2nd was a PPTV King 7, AFAIK never sold outside of China, so even when set to English the ROM was partly in Chinese. This one I reflashed with CyanogenMod and it worked well. My camera no longer focused but that was about it. For its time it was _stunning_ and it's still in use by a friend of mine about 5Y after I bought it second-hand.

The CPU looks like a lackluster (MediaTek helioG80). Single core: slightly over 1/3 of Poco F3 or 1/4 of iPhone 12.