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.

Comments

Custom Roms, and Android

[Zombie Ryushu]

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.

Xiaomi a good alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Sony, too

[DrYak]

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)

Re:Sony, too

[gchat]

Unfortunately, Sony shot themselves in the foot when they started wiping the camera DRM keys after unlocking their device. And so did Samsung when they implemented KNOX on all their devices. Both those manufacturers basically tell their customers that they are allowed to unlock their phones by permanently handicapping them.

Re:EMUI is the real issue

[Anonymous Coward]

seconded, besides EMUI has the bad habit of killing power hungry applications like, for example, GPS tracking applications.

It was always a suprise to discover that the device recorded only 1 hour of hiking out of 4.

Worst thing is, there are many ways to disable this power "optimization" none of which works.

So after trying each one you come to the conclusion that the only option left is to buy a different phone.

Re:The difference between Unlocking and Rooting

[msauve]

Because you're wrong. You're referring to carrier ("SIM") locking. On Android phones, there's also bootloader locking, which prevents installation of custom firmware.That's what the article is referring to.

Rooting is a different thing. Custom firmware isn't necessarily rooted.