a not insignificant portion of generic weird mediatek chipset android phones come rooted from the manufacturer, because the OS is built with a root/developer configuration. This also helps malware like this spread on the sub-$80 android phones sold to non technically sophisticated users in the developing world.

I remember reading something about mediatek based phones saving on the BOM by utilizing virtualization on a single SoC to run the baseband RTOS and the Smartphone OS.

That’s actually kind of brilliant.

Until you get bugs like "3D games lag when in fast moving car due to constant cell handovers" and "4G doesn't work at the same time as playing a 1080p60 video, so netflix/youtube are broken unless on wifi".

Sure but the phones $80. Getting to that price point requires some compromises. You’d think they’d also set the baseband VM at highest QOS.

I'm currently using a Xiaomi Redmi Go that was a bit less than that and I think it's remarkable how few compromises it has.

That’s a fair compromise to make a smart phone more affordable.

This happened to me with the Triada virus, on a Nomu S10 - it came with factory ota. That one patched the Zygote process and became invisible and unremovable without reflashing.