Xiaomis hardware is pretty good. I especially like that IR blasters are still a thing. The software however is atrocious and gets worse over time.
Buying an Xiaomi phone you will have to comb through a couple hundred menus to deactivate ads and other privacy issues. Some of them will automatically turn back on on update.
You will also fight the extremely aggressive battery saving options at some point.
Alternate launchers are not really supported and break app switching sometimes.
And security updates are slow, up to multiple months between them. (But that is sadly not unique to Xiaomi)
Sadly options on a US market are extremely limited and I would much rather take xiaomi instead of Samsung and Google. But I cant
Imagine if they made a Linux phone and just worried about upstreaming their drivers to the mainline kernel.
Bee using Redmi Notes since v8 (14 now ) and had never seen an ad unless using garbage like their wallpapers and ringtones apps.
HyperOS, compared to other Android phones is actually pretty good, minimal and efficient using a custom homepage launcher, not the stock one.
My opinion on all the Chinese spins on Android is that all the annoying bits can almost always be disabled or removed (as somebody using a Vivo device running OriginOS), but it is frustrating as hell to deal with. If you use adb (or similar tool) to remove some of the bloatware, use a custom launcher, install apps through F-Droid/Obtainium/etc, the experience is quite nice aside from a few annoyances (most notably, the constant “scanning” of newly installed/updated apps that always fails for apps installed through “external sources”, but it is not too obtrusive as installs are not blocked)
What I can say though, the Chinese brand devices have excellent cameras that exceed the competition and usually great battery life too. If those are important to you and you don’t mind the annoyances of “fixing” the software (and having no option for LineageOS or similar), they could be worth looking into.
That said, in the future, I will probably decide to get either a Fairphone or a cheaper Xperia device (like the 10 VII), since both of those will support custom ROMs (in Fairphone’s case, Linux too!) and, even when stock, they have clean software too. They also have other neat tricks, like being super repairable and modular (for Fairphone), retaining the headphone jack + no notch/cutout (Xperia), and having microSD slots (both!)
pop-up whenever a new app is installed or updated
Right before this it does fake “scans” for malware and child protection stuff that appear to do nothing
The “scans” that appear whenever I try to install or update an app: (in this example, an innocuous compass app from F-Droid)
… How do you know the child protection scan does nothing?
Well, it (and the other “tests”) always fails for literally any app I try to install, purely because I am installing from a third-party app store rather than the Vivo one (and presumably Google Play, but I don’t have a Google account to try that)
This is for every newly installed or updated app, even for things like a basic clock app with no network permissions. I have added in an additional comment the “scans” that the phone does
But no, I’m not downloading anything I shouldn’t as an under 18. Just standard mobile apps and games from F-Droid and sometimes Obtainium too.
