I've been told that the reasoning behind this is shady resellers loading unremovable system malware to the system partition (which runs as device admin++) before reselling this to you.

Apparently this is a huge problem in China, where there seems to be quite literally no trust at all on online shopping. This actually does seem to be the case if you try buying devices from any NON-xiaomi-official store Aliexpress shop. They're usually $0.01-$1.00 cheaper, and are guaranteed to be packed with massive amounts of malware. None of which can be pressed "disable" or "uninstall" (greyed out).

They use fake reviews and fake buyers much like Amazon in the west, to inflate their order count and ratings to be sorted above Xiaomi official store

This is exactly what Android verified boot is meant to prevent: https://source.android.com/security/verifiedboot. Why can't Xiaomi just do that?

Jesus, do you have any sources (Chinese is fine) for this? This is horribly anti-consumer and I'm surprised there's not more of a push back if it's so common.

Try search for phrase "fakerom" or "fake rom" or "rottensys" with xiaomi.

The resellers get paid a few dollars for the malware install. I think the most common is people reselling to ship out to other countries, and not sold in China itself.

The aliexpress shops get shut down, negative feedback, but they just open another. Note that aliexpress actually shuts these down in the first place and is "reputable" end of things. Never ever buy devices from gearbest, wish, etc. - ever .

another reason being some eBay/re-sellers buy in low cost places (like India/China) - reinstall EU ROM and sell it at high cost. (Even now many devices in Asian markets come with a label like - Only for India-SIM)

Anti-consumer? By the capitalist businesses? Of course. It's just like buying crap from Amazon. If you use it you support it.

Xiaomi phones have unlockable bootloaders, so rooting is really trivial, but guess what? You need a Xiaomi account to unlock the bootloader too! And they make you wait several days to do it.

And no, you can't break an Android device by rooting it. Worst case you'll have to reflash the system partition through recovery.

Went through this recently. Had to download xiaomi unlock software to unlock the bootloader. Probably sent an image of my hard drive back to china in the process. And the 7 day wait period. Really is an example of price too good to be true because they collect your data and probably get huge government subsidies to do so. Nice phone though once you flash it.

Yeah I did do that too several years ago too, but I ran it on a VM because I didn't have a real Windows machine anyway.

>Probably sent an image of my hard drive back to china in the process.

Come on. Do better.

I just bought the same phone as a gift for my girlfriend, and was considering getting one for me one day since it's a really nice piece of hardware for the price. Some searches around brought this link of a community of non official developers attempting to clean up the system from some preinstalled junk.

https://xiaomi.eu/community/

You are probably better off wiping it and installing stock android or some popular custom ROM over trying to hack away the MIUI spyware.

Is there any tested and safe way to reflash it with a custom ROM (suggestions?). The chance of bricking a new phone doesn't look that appealing.

ps: Sadly, the Pinephone is permanently out of stock, otherwise I wouldn't even consider anything else.

I bought a Poco X3 NFC about a month ago, and also was confronted with the Xiaomi account signup request when I tried to enable USB debugging.

For me this was enough of a reason to send the device back, but I started fiddling around and ended up being able to use USB debugging without an Xiaomi account. I don't remember how I managed to do this, I think I had to disable a specific MIUI optimization. No ADB had to be used for this. I think it was this https://android.stackexchange.com/a/185876

I'm also pretty sure that I did not insert a SIM card at that point, because I was still using the device-to-be-replaced on that and the following days.

I think it's just a lot of tactics which they use in order to push you to create an account, but ultimately it's not required.

That being said, I really despise their MIUI, all their modifications. Everything about it attempts to make you use their products, even if Google's apps are already installed.

For me, the Android experience which the Pixel devices give you are all I want. Even Motorola's minor enhancements are something I don't want on a new phone.

> Is that not insane?

Yes I personnaly find it very schocking.

Bought a Samsung A20 for the same purpose, no need for a sim or any sort of dev account.

Plugged the usb cable and a few minutes later my nativescript app was running.

Same for the mi pad plus 4 to root it. You have to have it tied to an account for a month.

>2) insert a SIM card to the device (!)

You need to insert a SIM AND use mobile data on it (ie. turn off wifi, enable mobile data). Just inserting a dummy SIM card won't work.

That's terrible. Is it possible to even root it without enabling debug mode though? I've always had to use "adb reboot-bootloader" to get into the bootloader because the stupid key combination doesn't seem to work on recent phones, or maybe it's just that my fingers aren't fast enough.

I ran into the exact same thing. And because I don't have a SIM card (it's an at-home "tablet"), I have no way to enable USB debugging. Pretty frustrating.

If Lineage starts supporting this device, I'll definitely move over from MIUI.

Yes, I returned it and got a Samsung instead for this exact reason.

Any model to recommend? Not sure if our usecases are the same -- I wanted to find a cheap "lower end of the market" phone to test my mobile game on. Frankly, the poco m3 might even be too powerful for that purpose...

Not a Samsung in my experience. They get slow quick and the bluetooth chip on mine died literally out of nowhere. After 3 months of use, no less.

Get a pixel or a oneplus.

I have a Galaxy A21s now. It was just slightly more expensive than the Xiaomi i tried. Not sure how low end it is though.

Mind, it's strictly a development phone. It sits on my desk plugged in, unless I debug those Android apps. No sim card in either. My personal phone is an iPhone XS.

I recently ordered the 2020 version of the Moto G Power (XT2041-4) from Costco for personal use, upgrading from the Moto G6 Play.

And although Lenovo is now China-owned, the Moto line is still pure Android and no bloat.

Did a lot of research and the the last gen G Power is the best spec'd budget phone around this price point that is not a Samsung and sold in typical NA big box stores.

A10 or A01 are pretty slow