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Chinese Phone Maker Huawei Risks Alienating Its Loyal Customer Base By Taking a Strong Stand Against Unlocking of Its Handsets, Users Say (irishtech.ie)
A post on Irish technology news blog, which criticizes the recent works of the world's second largest smartphone maker Huawei, is being widely circulated across several Android communities, with most people agreeing with the concerns raised in the post. From the story: Huawei is the second largest smartphone manufacturer in the world, falling second only to Samsung having recently overtaken Apple. They're huge in Ireland and across the globe. As a company, they have done a number of great things for both the enthusiast and the general user alike, but amidst privacy concerns the company has started to lash out at the community which helped get it (and especially its sub-brand Honor) off of the ground. Not only have they begun to block users from unlocking the devices which they've paid for, they are now looking to make users return their already unlocked devices to their normal state, according to numerous reports on the forums of XDA-Developers and well known Magisk developer topjohnwu. "I am informed that a new Huawei OTA will render Magisk-installed devices from booting," the developer wrote. Magisk is a popular "root" solution used which gives a user access to their device's system files.
Huawei was huge with the development community for a number of reasons, no less because their devices were some of the easiest to unlock out of all of the major manufacturers. You simply applied for your key online and promptly received it. It was a rather painless system, which allowed you to then install what's known as a "custom ROM". A custom ROM is simply just a custom version of Android, free from all of the included pre-installed applications from Huawei. They often run better too, again because of the lack of bloat.
Huawei was huge with the development community for a number of reasons, no less because their devices were some of the easiest to unlock out of all of the major manufacturers. You simply applied for your key online and promptly received it. It was a rather painless system, which allowed you to then install what's known as a "custom ROM". A custom ROM is simply just a custom version of Android, free from all of the included pre-installed applications from Huawei. They often run better too, again because of the lack of bloat.
Only .001% of customers unlock their handsets.
What the bok bok? Crazy dumb asia?
In 20 years 95% of tech news will be from China, but I don't understand why Slashdot keeps artificially pushing news stories about it in advance.
Seriously, if you run a script that searches for the keyword China on Slashdot articles the last 3 years it's utterly ridiculous, and most of the stories are barely relevant to Slashdot. Who is causing this?
they don't want you to load a firmware doesn't have the pre-installed spyware and exploits that their government wants on the devices.
the irony here is the company has been hacking, reverse engineering and copying foreign products since its founding.
The only way I can understand why large companies have a tendency to shoot themselves in the foot is that, contrary to certain politicians, corporations are NOT people too. In fact, if they were they would, by definition, be sociopaths.
“Helped get it off the ground”? No way. For Huawei to rival Samsung in sales, 99.9% of those sales were to clueless users, who would not even know what custom ROM is, and had no desire to load one. These users buy a new phone every 1-3 years.
As all the game console maker learned from PS3 boot other OS feature, and what Apple already knew, techies made up less than 0.01% of their target market. Catering for them made no business sense, and very likely cause loads of headache. Instead of bringing in more customers, they are more likely to break your system and threaten your business model. Better to shut them out right from the start.
These techies do like to overrate their own importance and like to claim their friends look to them for recommendations. Maybe that would influence 0.1% of the users, the remaining 99.9% buy whichever phone looked best at a price they can afford.
Huawei is yet another arm of the Oligarchs and Kleptocracts who rule over 1.3B indentured servants.
And so they lured the suckers and idiots of the West by selling cheaper phones, and simultaneously enabling "developers" to plant their malware of the day in the phone. Now that China has planted a bug in the pockets of these entitled folks, it give you the finger. Go figure.
They are the second biggest phone manufacturer.
They shipped 150m phones in 2017 and are going to ship 200m phones in 2018.
XDA has a total of 6.6m users in total. Lets ignore that most of those users are inactive, and that most of them won't be about huawei phones. Lets also assume people buy a phone every 2 years.
That means that, in a completely ridiculous use case which we know is overblown, under %2 of their user base will be effected.
It's more likely well under %0.01 of their actual handsets.
I only buy phones that allow for my bootloader to be unlocked... easily. Good job for getting off my list.
too late, lick the frozen pole.
Looks like Huawei is off the menu boys.
I have always bought my Android Phones direct from Manufacturer. I have a BLU Studio 5.0. An R1 HD, and a Vivo 5, which is my current daily driver.
The Studio 5.0C I have has no custom Rom for it. I use a modified Stock Rom with Root+XPrivacy. I do have TWRP installed. It runs Android KitKat. It never had a locked bootloader. GAPPS Removed.
The R1 HD Has several Custom Roms. I had to use a Bootloader exploit to unlock the Bootloader, and Flash TWRP, then Flash only Rom where all the hardware works. Which is LineageOS 13.1 (Android Marshmellow.). GAPPS was not included.
There are LineageOS 14.1 Roms for the R1 HD, they work pretty well, but, not if you want the camera to work.
it's a problem with the drivers built into the kernel. We don't have the sources, and never will. The only option is to reverse engineer the binaries, but the amount of work required has caused pretty much everyone to abandon this phone.
And that brings us too:
The Vivo 5. I had to do some really risky stuff to get this thing's bootloader unlocked using SP Flash tools. But I got it, and I now run LineageOS 14.1 Android Nougat 7.1.2 and all the hardware works, I have full root control, and no GAPPS Even through there is other Android Nougat roms, there is no Oreo Rom. Which has me worried.
the other 99% of the customers only care about a great phone at a great price. They are simply not interested in "modding" or tweaking the phone.
I bet that they are member of the Google android manufacturer club or whatever name they use like Open Hanset Alliance. There were a number of articles documenting Google trend to reduce Android fragmentation. It leads them to go away from the open source philosophy and values.
I bet that Huawei is simply caving on this pressure with the same effect on the open source side.
Xiaomi phones are a good alternative. They come with a locked bootloader BUT Xiaomi has an easy process to get them unlocked and install custom roms.
Plus they are very good quality and not expensive. Tons of features. And they usually have bigger batteries thus more standby.
Or is the the point all the handset makers think they have a captive market and can lock down all the phones of the cattle?
I had the Huawei Nexus 6P.
It was a great phone and always had the latest and greatest Android version running. Sadly, it was very slippery and I dropped it one too many times..the last one into the pool and I was never able to fully repair it.
I liked that phone so much that I replaced it with a P20 pro.
Boy, do I regret it.
Compared to the 6P, it is a dumpster fire on a hot Texas summer day.
It never occurred to me that Huawei would break so many stock Android features with their ridiculous EMUI.
Want to interact with a notification from the lock screen? Nope, cannot do it.
Want to pull down the top menu to enable or disable wifi from the lock screen? Nope, cannot do it.
Want to select a wifi network directly from the pull down menu without going to wifi settings? Nope, cannot do it.
Dismiss alarm from lock screen? Nope, cannot do it.
Want the huawei clock alarm to sound during quiet hours? Nope, cannot do it.
Want the google google clock alarms to work for more than 2 days without the need to turn on and off the alarm? Nope, cannot do it.
Want to use a cellular data connection WHILE your phone is camped on a wifi network which has no data connection? Nope, cannot do it. The phone will NOT use cellular even though wifi data is impossible.
Want to double click power button to turn on camera? Nope, cannot do it. You can use the volume down button though.
Want to use the volume double press to turn on the camera whilst listening to audio or in a call? Nope, cannot do it.
Want to fully disable the insane beautify mode for selfies? Nope, cannot do it.
It goes on and on and on.
This is really the first phone that I genuinely regret getting.
The only good thing is the battery life. Of course, the phone is so fucking slow, it's no small wonder the battery lasts two days.
Sony even have an official "Open Device" program.
To the point that they are official device used for some non-Android phone OS like Jolla's Sailfish X. (Full-blown GNU/Linux by the former Nokia "Meego/Maemo" team, that was let go once Elop happened to Nokia)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
All these unlocked phones still don't provide their android repos, so you can't really customize shit, unless you somehow have access to all their firmware too.
Even then you are basically stuck only replacing the kernel, and maybe some shitty parts of the OS.
Can't replace any of the interesting parts.
What Nokia overlooked was mindshare & influence. America might have been a minor market, but it was a hugely INFLUENTIAL market.
Huh... nope.
The reason behind the downfall of Nokia is that basically Elop and Microsoft happened to them.
Who did a tons of horribly bad decision that dragged down Nokia.
There are some people who have written at great lenght analyzing the subject. (Basically, Nokia disappeared from the carrier's own store due to making tons of bad decisions that alienated them, and that's the reason they disappeared from the US market. They also completely neglected the market where they were dominant and thus got their lunch eaten by cheap chinese android nonames).
It's also sweet that you think that just what a few bloggers speak about in the US will have such a big influence world-wide (though it partially happens around Apple and feature that get copied from them).
Do you think that companies pop from the ground like mushrooms ? One of the reasons that companies like Huawei have managed to become dominant is that they had build momentum taking over other markets. They became popular in countries looking for cheap Android phone. They have built manufacturing capacity, they have worked through the various kinks of early model and have an actual offering by the time they seek to replace a vacant niche in the US market.
They are the manufacturer who are already pushing shit tons of phones through aliexpress unto BRICS countries.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
...you use a custom ROM but do not use G-Apps? Or am I asking a stupid question? (I don't know much about android dev)
I have been using android and custom ROMs since the HTC magic (the first android device you could buy here).
I have a P20 pro, bought it because you could unlock it, and lineage OS would run on it, and on top you could still use the stock Huawei camera app. This gives me best of both worlds, the device and the camera is fantastic, but the software is horrible (I tried to use it for 1 week before giving up):
* they implemented some kind of process freezing that makes you lose notifications (I had this with hangouts, google photos, facebook messenger and more). Major dealbrearker, you can somehow exempt some apps from the freezing but that's very involved
* I got a call from my girlfriend with phone in priority only. Phone din't ring. She was not amused (we have twins and needed to come asap)
* you can not set the SMS ringtone to something else than the default notification sound (mind, this is with google's messages app, somehow they didn't implement the notification channels correctly)
* bluetooth is buggy, strangely works better in custom ROMs
* it's slow
* contains lots of bloatware
* if you want to use Google apps like calendar and contacts, you get lots of duplication, and confusion resulting from that (it will always open Huawei calendar)
Now running a project treble ROM and loving it. There are a few drawbacks, IR doesn't work, USB audio doesn't work, in call mute doesn't work, no notch support, but none of these are bigger issues than their own EMUI rubbish.
And as stated already here, people often come to me for buying advice for android phones, I will NOT recommend Huawei ever.
Built freedom in, turn freedom on
but turned it into
Built slavery in, turn slavery on
I'm afraid they will be more successful than FSF ever was
your a "party member" that means you have no vote
A smartphone is essentially 2 things
- A phone
and
- A computer
Unlocking refers to the phone part of the computer. For some strange reasons Americans buy phones only from their telecom service provider (that's like buying light bulbs only from your utility company). So the telecom provider locks the phone to their network. Unlocking allows you use the phone with other networks
Rooting is process getting admin privileges on the computer part of your smartphone
Why are these 2 terms used interchangeably in the article and the comments?
Don't forget the innate distrust for Chinese makers after news articles about spyware, unknown apps sending info to China, the fact that the US government had security concerns about their devices, and that US carriers will not touch Huawei with a ten foot pole.
Common sense here. A phone maker where people who know what they are talking about should be avoided... coupled with the fact that they are locking down their ROMs, brings about a conclusion that they want to keep stuff hidden.
One aside: The Chinese government requires all ventures on their soil be 51% owned by a domestic (Chinese) partner. All Chinese companies have Chinese government military and intel staffers as part of the company board. It would be like a US company having to have a representative from the Army, the NSA, and the DHS, and they have the final say for any company decisions.
Now, with this in mind, do you trust a Chinese company trying to hide stuff? Where there is smoke, there is fire. There are far better, and more trustworthy brands out there. If a handset maker doesn't trust people with their stuff, then why should I trust them? A typical phone has a -lot- of sensitive data on it, and if a brand starts being hush-hush about what they have, especially a Chinese brand that has been warned against by people who know what they are doing... that ensures I won't be buying it.
No, people may not be interested in building a custom ROM, or even rooting a device, but if their techie friend warns them that the phone from FooTel will ship with adware and spyware that they can't get rid of, and uploads their intimate pictures to some site overseas, they will eschew that phone for something more trustworthy.
I have had people ask a brand provider recommendation more than once, and privacy is a big concern, even for the people who are relatively clueless about tech stuff. They may not be rooting their phones, but they will be looking for advice from people who do.
Maybe they are going the Apple route. Hoping a closed off, walled off ecosystem is the best way. Sorry, I've had 3 of their phones. Excellent phones, great battery life. I've never felt the "need" to root any of their phones, but, I had the OPTION. Them taking away the OPTION is not good. Their biggest issue with me is lack of patch updates. I'm not so much concerned about which version of Android is on my device, but I would like to have the monthly security updates. With Huawei, even those can get bogged down unless you live in the Asia area. Now that the USA has pretty much kicked them out, I've moved on to the Essential PH-1 for now, given how dirt cheap it was. Great little phone, got Android 9 the minute I powered it up.
I switched from AT&T, to Straight Talk about 4-5 years ago and haven't looked back! I still use the at&t towers ;)
I'm "the tech guy" in my family, my extended family, and my huge circle of friends and professional colleagues. I'm also a higher-tier tech professional with influence both for my day job and as my side business.
Every single Android phone I've owned I've had root on.
Every single Android phone I've owned I've had an unlocked bootloader.
Every single Android phone (and most of my cell phones before) had MicroSD card slots.
These features are not only critical for the sort of stuff I need my phone to do, but also allow me to extend the useful life of the phone far past whenever the mfr arbitrarily decides to stop offering their own Android updates in the hopes of bullying me into prematurely buying a replacement.
Manufacturers beware: My family, friends, co-workers, and clients buy based upon my recommendations. Piss me off, and I don't recommend your shit.
Premise invalid. Conclusion wrong.
I am Joe Q. Public. Hear me roar.
full Apple or corporate will not take a look at them.
iPhones are more manageable and more secure than Android phones (people who manage these devices at scale will tell you that).
Also iOS has better support for Exchange / O365 than Android and longer support for updates, which means you can draw out the replacement-cycle or at least re-issue the phones to "lower-tier" employees.
So, it's simple as that: get used to the unroot-able phone. If that is what draws you to Android because you can "fix stuff that Google doesn't fix" or for whatever reason then start complaining to Google that they fix stuff instead of launching yet another messenger or pissing away money on moonshot-projects that go nowhere.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
I have been pretty happy with Xiaomi phones because there is such a simple process to unlock the bootloader. As for custom ROM's, what is everyone else using these days?
Make SELinux enforcing again!
The GPLv3 was supposed to prevent. Linus, by keeping Linux GPLv2, this is the future you signed us up for.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.