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Comment by zxcvgm | Hacker News Reader

Xiaomi apparently have also stopped unlocking their bootloaders, so the "workaround" was to go to an official store and ask them perform a downgrade, and before the staff can relock the bootloader, grab the phone and run:

https://x.com/kobe_koto/status/1949154478298456531

Absolutely hilarious.

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This is amazing. Imagine getting the cops called on you for this and having to explain why the phone company was against you stealing your own phone

It's still possible outside of China but you have to have a Mi account and for newer phones you have to make some forum posts or some dumb shit.

I dont think you need to do the forum posts but you need to request unlocking every two days and pray it works. Supposedly at 00:00 chinese local time for any chances of getting permission. Took me several months of trying non continuously.

So you were actually successful in the end? I've given up on it.

With the time difference I had to do it at 3am or something ridiculous like that.

They have effectively disabled bootloader unlocking. They can kindly fuck off.

Compared to my previous Xiaomi, which required an account of a certain age and active phone use. But after that the unlocking just worked.

This was before the new system, yes.

Wow, that's insane. Well done.

I had to do something similar with my old HTC m7, but nowhere this.... ridiculous.

I did that a few years ago. Had to download some tool to my PC.

Then make a request that takes 2 weeks to go through. and enter the or whatever (this was like 2016 or something).

Whole process was clearly designed to make you give up.

Their phones where junk then though and i just got something else in the end. They're a lot better now so actually unlocking it is probably worth something now.

The two week process was to irritate resellers who change the phone to target markets it wasn't designed for.

When you say junk then, I find that interesting as my first was a Redmi Note 4 launched in 2016, that I got in 2017 (and did this unlock process on, as I bought it in China), and the reason I got that phone in particular was its price (in the UK it was £120, in China I got it slightly cheaper at 1100 CNY) and that it was actually the fastest Android phone available at the time according to the AnTuTu benchmarks.

The modern Redmi Note series is usually a generation behind on performance now, but I keep buying them as they're still faster than I need and there's always still a decent phone less than £150. Only complaint is with the camera, which never seems to get any better even when they claim to have upgraded it.

I did that years ago when I bought a Redmi Note 4 in Shenzhen and discovered that the Chinese ROM is very locked down. I created the Mi post, but I don't remember having to make a forum post (although it does ring a slight bell). AFAIK it was just sending a DM to support on the forum / app to explain why you needed to install the Global ROM rather than the Chinese ROM (and being a foreigner was accepted as a valid reason). About a day later they unlocked the phone bootloader remotely, and then I could install any version of the Global ROM I wanted.

I've bought all my subsequent ones (Note 5, Note 8, Note 11, Note 12Pro) in either HK or UK so they all came with the Global ROM, and I've not felt the need to unlock any of them, so not tried to process since. But it definitely used to be pretty easy.

I suspect the reason for the weird process is legal to ensure that phones in China don't get unlocked in order to circumvent content controls.

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