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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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.