Other than the tracking, would you recommend it? Is LineageOS available? I've been curious about trying a Chinese phone for a while, but would only do it if Lineage is available, since I'm annoyed by anything more busy than stock Android.

LineageOS supports a lot of different Xiaomi devices: https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/#xiaomi

I have a tissot with LineageOS 16.0, not sure yet whether it will get 17 ported to it as well. The hardware is great for the price (bought it a year after launch, heavily discounted). I bought it specifically to run LineageOS on it, so I have no idea what the stock experience is like.

Official tissot support was dropped this month. No more security updates. https://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=82234015&pos...

Thanks for the heads-up. I guess I'll have to flee to a different ROM, then.

I have lineage on my xiaomi.

The bootloader is locked by default but if you ask for it to be unlocked they will do it. The process is intentionally manual to prevent hacking, but ultimately smooth.

Things might have changed since last year, but it hasn't been smooth at all for me.

Not only you need a Windows computer to unlock, but then it takes literally months to proceed and if you happen to do something that you're not told you should not do (like logging out or re-trying to unlock), the counter is reset and you have to wait even more. Plus the unlocking program on Windows randomly doesn't work and error messages are not helpful at all.

My Xiaomi is an impressive, nice and powerful phone that hasn't cost much. But it was so much pain to root that I won't probably ever buy a phone from them in the future.

On the Android One models, the unlock is just via settings + fastboot, like on Nexuses/Pixels

Yeah. I am using cdroid android v10(based on lineage). Last update was this month.

Running it for 2 years now.

I use this[1] hosts list that's designed to block almost all useless domains Xiaomi tries to contact. In addition to that list I manually blocked this domain[2] that Xiaomi only connects to on certain countries.

I'm using a Xiaomi with Android One and despite having opted out of analytics the phone still tries to connect to Xiaomi servers.

I've been considering installing LineageOS on it for some time but unlocking the bootloader unfortunately deletes everything I have installed or downloaded. I've never used the stock browser though, always Firefox.

[1] https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jerryn70/GoodbyeAds/master...

[2] app.chat.global.xiaomi.net

You should be using a custom rom.

Do they allow it? I was surprised the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, at the time a flagship phone on par with the Note 9 and others, actually had a locked bootloader.

It would've been a good opportunity to allow people to install whatever they want, to show that they're different than Samsung and other competitors, but no, they went and locked that down because of "safety". Mhmmm.

It's a little bit of an ordeal - you have to request a bootloader unlock and then wait two weeks. But doable.

Yeah, my pihole would usually block something like 70% of what was a good number of requests from my Xiaomi overnight.

It's gross.

I would never dream of using a Xiaomi phone without Lineage. Or Huawei. Or Samsung. Or any phone, actually.

I have a xiaomi rednote 8, how to block more privacy leaks?