Ok, that’s fair, enshittification is perhaps the wrong term here because it describes a process inherent to capitalism specifically. However, Chinese tech companies have been doing some bad stuff more generally. Perhaps not as bad as western counterparts, but still. Just from ones I personally encountered: TikTok is extremely addictive, wechat is a privacy nightmare, DJI is very anti-consumer requiring activation via an Android app and account for its cameras. Xiaomi is its own can of worms: HyperOS has ads baked-in to it, and as far as I could tell requires a Xiaomi account to change the ringtone on your own phone (WTF?); the robot vacuums require an account and a cloud connection to work; etc.
Hell, even bilibili is already full of ads if you visit it without an adblocker.
Don’t forget that Xiaomi makes it hell to unlock the bootloader: you have to make an account to request unlocking it and then wait some unspecified amount of time, and you can only do this once per year
When I bought my last phone, I unlocked the bootloader, was on my way to flash a new ROM when during checking all the functionality was working (as one should) I realized the camera was fucked. So I had to get it replaced (unfortunately no warranty repair option in the store where I bought it), and then couldn’t unlock the bootloader for like half a year :/
Yikes, fortunately I never had stubborn phones like that. My last phone was a Sony that I vaguely miss for its gigantic screen (and the fact that it was free for me 😸), and thankfully it was easy to unlock
Ok, that’s fair, enshittification is perhaps the wrong term here because it describes a process inherent to capitalism specifically. However, Chinese tech companies have been doing some bad stuff more generally. Perhaps not as bad as western counterparts, but still. Just from ones I personally encountered: TikTok is extremely addictive, wechat is a privacy nightmare, DJI is very anti-consumer requiring activation via an Android app and account for its cameras. Xiaomi is its own can of worms: HyperOS has ads baked-in to it, and as far as I could tell requires a Xiaomi account to change the ringtone on your own phone (WTF?); the robot vacuums require an account and a cloud connection to work; etc.
Hell, even bilibili is already full of ads if you visit it without an adblocker.
Don’t forget that Xiaomi makes it hell to unlock the bootloader: you have to make an account to request unlocking it and then wait some unspecified amount of time, and you can only do this once per year
Yep, comes with a fair bit of bloatware installed. That said, my Xiaomi only cost me about 150 quid and it’s lasted about 5 years so far.
Oh yeah I forgot about that part.
When I bought my last phone, I unlocked the bootloader, was on my way to flash a new ROM when during checking all the functionality was working (as one should) I realized the camera was fucked. So I had to get it replaced (unfortunately no warranty repair option in the store where I bought it), and then couldn’t unlock the bootloader for like half a year :/
Yikes, fortunately I never had stubborn phones like that. My last phone was a Sony that I vaguely miss for its gigantic screen (and the fact that it was free for me 😸), and thankfully it was easy to unlock