Warning: Poco F3 is different from the Poco F3 GT available in some regions - GT uses Mediatek Dimensity 1200 instead of Snapdragon 870. Mediatek SoCs don't work well with LineageOS.
2 things that make me much less excited about how much control I have:
There is still a xiaomi boot rom running under Havoc or Lineage, I can only assume xiaomi can put anything they want in that, so my phone isn't more secure, it's just less bloated.
Also, once you unlock you can now get access to the phone with a computer, bypassing the password. It becomes physically less secure. I believe there are some full storage encryption options but they seemed very finicky.
Please correct me if I'm wrong with any of the terminology, I last messed with this months ago. Sad that these are our options (walled garden and/or wiretap ourselves).
Just set up encryption. Once it works, it works, so it's worth it.
I've bought a Mi 9 which had a similar price to features ratio in the hope the it'd become popular with the LineageOS community so I could run the latest and greatest open source ROM (it didn't) and the phone is pretty great.. . except for the terrible Xiaomi software. Nothing quite makes a premium piece of hardware feel cheap like a shitty "storage cleaner" application and ads (which you can disable, luckily) built right into the OS.
I'll probably buy Xiaomi again because of the hardware value for money, but this time I'll probably wait until LineageOS support is there officially instead if just hoping someone will add it eventually.
On Mi Max 3 it works perfectly with only a few tweaks after flashing.
https://github.com/phhusson/treble_experimentations/issues/1...
This one, and one more for Bluetooth audio
Kind of a big deal. Do you still need to apply to unlock your own device and hope they let you?
and goes later to
Quote: "Here is the list of apps that I deleted from my phone.
com.android.chrome
Alternative: Microsoft Edge"
Some think that a local evil dude is less evil than a foreign evil dude. As an European, I would be less concerned if my data was pwned by Xiaomi rather than Microsoft; should my government ask for my data, they're more likely to be served by Microsoft than Xiaomi.
> Some think that a local evil dude is less evil than a foreign evil dude.
Some people think that, although like you i'm less afraid of chinese secret police than french/US secret police, but what would be even better is when no "evil dude" is involved at all :)
those are the only two apps truly necessary for the manufacturer to recoup the costs of producing the device
Xiaomi caught many times on stealing user data: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Xiaomi+browser
i had made a point to not buy realme or xiaomi or oneplus or oppo or samsung because of their "custom ui" are ladden with crap.
i do not own a google account so i use aurora store and f-droid store to get mah apps. i use pi-hole at my home and i generally see around 80% blocked requests.
edit: i disabled google assistant so the dedicated assitant button doesnt work. i dont know if it can be reused somehow?