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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.
“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.
If nerds had such influence, then Linux would have gotten more power in the desktop and Windows 10 would have failed.
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
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.
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 ]
The problem is that these companies, Samsung, LG, Huawei etc. think that they need their own special sauce as a differentiator in order to set their product apart from the competition.
What they fail to understand is that people do not buy a phone BECAUSE of Touchwiz, they buy it IN SPITE of have Touchwiz.
It's like the earlier days of PCs where OEM jammed loads of crap ware on the PC even though people just wanted a Windows machine without all the nonsense installed.
I am sure there are some people who like Touchwiz, EMUI and all the other flavors, but in my experience people are far happier with "real" Android. This is why the Pixel sells. This was why the Nexus phones were successful. Or the Motorola "pure" editions outsold the normal variants via their online shop.
Of course, they still don't understand it and insist to add their stupid broken versions of Android.
I long for the day of a common phone architecture where a person can just install the OS they want.
Phone makers are HW companies, not SW companies. Focus on that.
That's cute, you think the concept of ownership is an American ideal. Hints: DRM, DMCA