Are there any good non-Chinese smartphone besides Samsung? Preferably someone who delivers a stock android?
Pixel with GrapheneOS
And if GrapheneOS is too hardcore for you, CalyxOS
Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns
91–100 of 427 posts
Re: Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns
#92There are no details really as to how Xiaomi censors those terms. If one does not use the bundled-in browser / app-store, I doubt Xiaomi can censor anything at all in other browsers unless they MiTM with client-cert. OTOH, many popular non-browser apps (at least the ones that matter) pin certificates, so even Lenovo-esque shenanigans wouldn't work [0]. What can they possibly be doing in the firmware or the ROM to bre…
Android hacker community, like XDA, should be able to quickly reserve engineer this as more details surface
Re: Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns
#93I think you would have to be mad to leave the stock ROM running on a Xiaomi phone, IIRC they were caught logging peoples browser history a few years ago. Several models have mainline LineageOS support, I'm running Lineage on my Mix 2S and hope to have years worth of updates going forward. The hardware is really good value as long as you install an non-tainted OS.
Good value assuming you're on the right carrier. AT&T in the US and its MVNOs are moving to a whitelist model in February, making Xiaomi phones unusable for anyone in the US not on T-Mobile.
Re: Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, quite the opposite actually. Just that it doesn't mean anything if a random Xiaomi user in Europe can type words Xiaomi is monitoring. Since that user most likely isn't the reason why Xiaomi is doing that kind of stuff.
Oh I get what you mean, my bad. You're saying the above poster "typing in Free Tibet and nothing bad happened" doesn't prove anything. Yep, agreed.
Exactly that, I could have phrased it better I think.
Re: Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns
#95https://www.reddit.com/r/Xiaomi/comments/pgk8y3/xiaomi_camer... Related, in this thread the OP discovered that he couldn’t take photos of an election ballot - they were being overwritten with a big green block.
No, the OP in the thread later retracted as they could not replicate and it seemed more like a random bug in the camera:
"Yesterday I was a bit in a hurry and could not do all tests that I would have liked to. Today I tried to repeat the whole process with the same setup, documents still laying on the same table untouched etc. Just the lighting changed substantially (morning sun).
I was unable to repeat the 'green picture effect' even once... all pictures taking with Xiaomi stock camera turned out well.
I am sorry that I jumped to unproven conclusions (censoring) :( "
Please read your full source in the future before posting. It clouds the discussion. (I just did this myself on another article)
Re: Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns
#96I wonder why is anybody still surprised. China has no qualms invading privacy of anybody. They will try any and every way to get whatever they need and they are pretty effective at it. Ever read about making business in China? What we call cheating or stealing is a standard business practice there. If you point it out they will back off and try somewhere else, ad nauseam. It is practically part of Chinese culture and…
I think the focus on China with respect to privacy is misplaced. This is a problem with many tech companies now. Just look at how smart TVs hoover up data from their customers. There's a danger to painting this as a problem with China's tech industry because it implicitly lets other tech companies off the hook for their horrendous privacy practices.
> What we call cheating or stealing is a standard business practice there.
What about "move fast and break things"? Or Uber's skirting of labor and taxi laws in many jurisdictions worldwide? I get that this is literally whataboutism, but the above examples are considered virtuous by many here. What's the fundamental difference? To me it seems like China has just perfected the tech "hustle" culture invented in SV.
Re: Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Use Magisk, your banking apps will work fine.
For now, until hardware backed attestation becomes properly enforced... Isn't security great
It probably will never be. It just takes one OEM to fuck it up and everyone can use their device ID. That's why hardware backed attestation doesn't work, OnePlus fucked it up and now Magisk can pretend to be that phone and get exempted.
Re: Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns
#98I just helped someone remove the built-in Chinese malware from a US Government provided phone.
It's insane.
https://blog.malwarebytes.com/android/2020/07/we-found-yet-a...
Re: Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you think a Chinese company would even ask for permission? :)
You can't exactly do it without permission though. You need to crack the bootloader for the baseband and that's way easier said than done and immediately noticeable.
> You need to crack the bootloader for the baseband and that's way easier said than done
There have been more than enough cases of people poking holes in bootloaders, including secret services. For what it's worth, Huawei and Xiaomi can be considered as part of the Chinese CCP dictatorship and I'd expect them to have access to such exploits.
> and immediately noticeable.
How is an user supposed to notice a modified baseband firmware? The only thing that a user can see is if the device has been rooted, but with a factory-supplied backdoor even that doesn't help.
Re: Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns
#100Free Tibet. I just typed that on my Xiaomi with stock MIUI, using Google Gboard.
Unless you are based in China, a Chinese national, a known dissident or a journalist it doesn't really matter, does it? Also, how do you know what Xiaomi did after you typed it? EDIT: As I really phrased it badly, I mean it doesn't proof anything if none of the above mentioned groups does it. It absolutely matters that Xiaomi is censoring and monitoring stuff based on key words. I oppose that even more than oppose Ap…
Those first two categories make up 1 in 5 people on earth. You don't care what happens to 20% of the human race?