this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2025
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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So I guess my next phone will be a Chinese phone. Even if it spies on me, I'll have the freedom to install whatever I want from anywhere.
The Chinese have a golden window of opportunity. Let's hope they don't mess this up.
LOL. Chinese phones are way worse, they simply block installations of "unsanctioned" apps with no workaround.
My wife is Chinese and I used to live there for 7 years, it's an absolute privacy nightmare.
As someone who uses a Xiaomi phone, that's not true.
It was a faff getting it to install any random apk I found of off the Internet, but it was possible. Did involve holding down a graphic for 10 seconds as part of the unlock procedure.
But for now at least, you can still install any unsigned apk without going through a store.
I have a Xiaomi 14 pro, I just have to tap the correct button to install an outside app. (It's in Chinese, even though the phone is set to English, so i have no idea what it says but it gets me there).
If you bought it outside of China that might be a thing, for Chinese phones it shows a cancel button only. There is a confirm button, but it's greyed out and not clickable.
So I bought it from giztop, they take the Chinese version of the phone, get the Google play store on there and get it set to English, plus a couple other things, so that it's easier for you to get started with. I bought this because I had thought they'd make a global version and I could flash that rom when that happened, and only deal with some Chinese sections of the phone for a short while, but for some reason they didn't with this specific phone, they did for the 14 ultra.
I busted the phone out again to see the popup I was talking about, but actually one of the (semi) recent updates made it so the buttons are english. I am allowed to just install things with a few pop-up warnings and the phone does some kind of check. I wonder if it's because it's an "unlocked" phone (I don't know if it's the same in China where a carrier locks the phone to their network and has their own shit installed if you buy it from them) or what.
Either way, interesting.
So many people don't understand this at all. China is still the same as when the tanks were rolling over college students.
Way easier to install a custom rom
Apart from Xiaomi and OnePlus, which are released for international audiences, I'm not aware of a single Chinese phone with active rom development.
Honor, Huawei, Poco, Oppo, ...the list goes on.
Oppo = OnePlus
Huawei bootlaoders can't be unlocked, so absolutely no custom ROM there.
Honor bootlaoders can't be unlocked, so absolutely no custom ROM there.
Poco seems possible for now, never used one of their phones, but well good that there's something possible.
If you dont want to put a custom rom on it (which is becoming increasingly difficult), you're can buy a HK version off taobao.
I guess if GrapheneOS finally gets spoken to by a manufacturer interested in filling this market gap, that would be awesome too.
Hell, maybe it could be a chinese manufacturer.
GrapheneOS is currently actively talking to a major Android OEM in order to help them reach the security requirements for a subset of their future devices. If that succeeds GrapheneOS will be able to run on non-Pixel devices.
Oh please let this work out
Timewindow 2026, perhaps 2027 for release of such devices. Talks have been going on for a few months, if it wasn't working out at all that probably should've been clear already.
I am very happy with my One Plus 13 phone. It has better hardware and was at a better price than Samsung's S25.
Samsung used to be good. I used to always buy samsung but since I can't affort a "high end" device, I go with the medium end ones, and samsung medium end ones are terrible for the price. So instead of getting a medium end samsung, you can get something better and cheaper on another brand
Samsung always seems to have the paradigm of good hardware with shitty software, and with their recent phones they seem to manage to enshittify both.
So you either need to put a custom/global rom on it, get the hk version, or pay like 20% more for a global version.
Bonus problems, AT&T in the US kicked off the international phone versions a while back. They worked fine. I have a bunch of leftover G4 international versions that they up and banned one day around 2020. The terrible US version remained allowed.