Chinese Phone Maker Huawei Risks Alienating Its Loyal Customer Base By Taking a Strong Stand Against Unlocking of Its Handsets, Users Say (irishtech.ie) 148
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
> Only .001% of customers unlock their handsets.
Maybe, but that 0.001% has tremendous influence on the purchasing decisions of OTHERS. Who do people looking for a new phone ask for advice? The 0.001% who root & reflash their phones. If THOSE users think Huawei is now the devil & tell everyone who asks for advice that Huawei phones suck, they're unlikely to buy Huawei phones.
Think back to how quickly Nokia went from #1 worldwide to "basically irrelevant". What happened? They made a business decisi
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
If nerds had such influence, then Linux would have gotten more power in the desktop and Windows 10 would have failed.
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There are things that hold Linux back. Lack of games and lack of Adobe productivity tools. And to very recently shitty graphics subsystems, which is pretty all right now and only getting significantly better by the day. A lot of Windows/Linux gamin titles already run better on Linux.
You put games and Adobe tools on Linux, and watch user base migration.
When comes to phones - Huawei does NOT have this leverage. Same as with Nokia.
Gaming and Adobe graphics tools are not the two main forces that drive desktop sales, not by a long shot.
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What holds Linux back is not "games", nor Acrobat. It is a tool for massively managing desktops in a commodized fashion. Microsoft's main reason for being so entrenched in the enterprise is the entire Active Directory GPO system, which allows for a lot of flexibility. Microsoft's AD also has a lot of enterprise tools as well.
This doesn't say that one can do similar with a masterless Puppet setup using hiera and a ton of custom manifests, or having Salt, Chef, or Ansible have clients pull the configs from
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Linux will often not have some of the extra polish that you will see in Windows or in OS X
When awaking from sleep, my menu options in Gnome may be garbled. Sometime a task that you would expect to click and drag to fix will not be there. Request for features or improvements will often lead to "You have the source, fix it yourself!"
So even if I do fix it myself, perhaps taking hours or days of my work, only for my patch to go away in the next update from the mainline, trying to post my fix to be included in
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Also the lack of Microsoft Office. Sure, you can mostly run it by using special compatibility layers (WINE, or its commercially supported relative CrossOver) but the experience isn't perfect. Or you can use the more limited web versions. But if you want the full Office experience you still have to run Windows.
There are also lots of more specialized software packages that are only available for Windows or that run best there. Developers gravitate to the largest market and ignore others.
Linux has beaten Windo
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If you are big into [choose any topic] and want to do new and interesting things [in such named topic] then then the normal consumer version of [tool used in such topic] is often not well designed in your goal of doing the interesting thing you want to do [in topic]
While we may want a mobile phone that we can modify to to run a company server enabling such features will only cause the general public to install malware and infect the wireless network. They are better off saying these are the Apps you got, s
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A Honda Civic isn't a good car if you are interested in racing or offload driving.
Pretty much anything that moves can be raced!
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
Off roading may require more extensive modifications.
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
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Re: Who cares? (Score:1)
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If nerds had such influence, then Linux would have gotten more power in the desktop and Windows 10 would have failed.
False. Nerds have plenty of influence when the decision is mostly irrelevant to the end user.
Q: Which phone should I buy?
A: Apple if you like Apple devices, ${Vendor} if you like Android. They all do mostly the same.
Thanks mate!
Q: Which OS should I use?
A: Linux! You'll need to learn everything new, many people won't help you, you need all new software, you need to rethink how your files are stored and the interfaces range from the unstable to the unusable from a simplicity point of view but you'll be fine,
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I wrote desktop, not smartphones, and not servers.
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Linux is currently installed in over 3 billion smartphones The Linux Kernel (or parts of it) Android is a different OS then what we call Linux or GNU/Linux which we use for our normal distributions.
Over 80% of the servers worldwide are build on Linux This number seemed to be pulled out of you butt, even if accurate it could be interpreted differently. Being that VMWare and many virtual environments may be Linux at its core, they can be running dozens of Windows servers.
Linux is installed in hundreds of mi
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Strictly speaking yes you are correct, but then Linux shouldn't be mentioned in any statistic. So 3% for Linux in the Desktop should actually be x% Ubuntu Linux, y% Debian GNU/Linux,
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So Linux which is known for being a Command Line driven interface, works best on systems that do not have keyboards attached.
Nokia (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [blogs.com]. (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.
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Are you nuts? Or, sorry, that's a little rude -- but, Nokia had fallen into utter obscurity WAAY before Microsoft had anything to do with them.
In 1994, yes 1994, Nokia was a WORLD LEADER in cell phones. They slowly and repeatedly lost market for decades, then neglected to embrace the 'new' world of the smart phone properly, much like Blackberry did. Blackberry used to be a world leader, just like Nokia... had their own variant of the 'smart phone', just like Nokia, and on and on and on.
People are confusi
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Maybe, but that 0.001% has tremendous influence on the purchasing decisions of OTHERS. Who do people looking for a new phone ask for advice? The 0.001% who root & reflash their phones.
Most people that I know buy a phone without asking me for permission and advice. And some of the 0.001% are honest to themselves, and that while they might like to root their phone, it might not be a good idea for their mates to do it.
It may work for you, but not for your friends.
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Maybe, but that 0.001% has tremendous influence on the purchasing decisions of OTHERS.
Exactly.
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Only .001% of customers unlock their handsets.
If so, why does Huawei care so much about people unlocking their phones?
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Because it only takes one person digging around in their phone's innards to expose the spyware.
make sense.. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: make sense.. (Score:1)
Hey, fair is fair. If Uncle Sam gets to spy on everyone thanks to Big Brother Google, then Emperor Xi gets to spy on everyone thanks to the good comrades at Huawei.
Re:make sense.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Nonsense. It's been known for decades that the real power is in the phone's radio firmware, that on most phones has full, 100% access to the same RAM your phone's main CPU uses. It can also track you without the OS knowing, as the GPS radio is controlled by that firmware.
It can phone home, take pictures without the OS knowing, the list goes on and on and on.
All phones have closed source firmwares these days.
Yet everyone focuses on the OS as if it somehow gives control to the device.
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Nonsense. It's been known for decades that the real power is in the phone's radio firmware, that on most phones has full, 100% access to the same RAM your phone's main CPU uses. It can also track you without the OS knowing, as the GPS radio is controlled by that firmware.
It can phone home, take pictures without the OS knowing, the list goes on and on and on.
All phones have closed source firmwares these days.
Yet everyone focuses on the OS as if it somehow gives control to the device.
I'm retired. The only pictures they can take are me watching TV or on the John. At age 80, I still have my teeth for a smile. I have a belief the spyware will only be useful for working stiffs who do finance, engineering or medicine. A teacher has no fear of spyware, neither does a housewife, or small business man. I don't give a second thought to spyware. It would only bother me if I have reduced battery life.
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Re:make sense.. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's cute, you think the concept of ownership is an American ideal. Hints: DRM, DMCA
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No. You buy a book - your have the right to the book, that instance or copy. You own that particular book just not the right to disseminate copies.
Software, movies or music? DRM in combination with DMCA (and analogous laws elsewhere) effectively removes every right other than paying someone. Even in places where users are theoretically able to do things those are removed, even when copyright owners are unfairly compensated for theoretical economical losses - e.g. Sweden.
DRM and DMCA is a combination that cr
Reasons (Score:1)
Techies overrated their importance (Score:4, Insightful)
“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.
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These techies do like to overrate their own importance
Don't you wish you were a techie should you could be more important? I understand your frustration, but please let me explain it to you in two words "thought leaders". You are welcome.
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Introvert computer geeks, the prime movers in the new global modern multipolar technocracy because barring languages (tee hee) they are much the same and their internal culture tends to dominate with regard to individual thought and expression over the cultures they are immersed in but some what separated from and the meek shall inherit the earth, mwa hah hah. I tend to agree ;D.
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So why do people keep buying iPhones, then? You supposed "influencers" always rail against them but the general public couldn't care less. It's almost as if reality is that no one cares what you whiners think and just buy whatever they want.
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So why do people keep buying iPhones, then? You supposed "influencers" always rail against them but the general public couldn't care less.
First, there are plenty of influencers who are pro-iPhone, because they enjoy walled gardens which provide absolutely zero benefit, because they are dumb. Second, there are plenty of users who don't know anyone who knows anything. They don't have a geek to ask, so they just make the best purchase they can, and it usually sucks.
Re: Techies overrated their importance (Score:2)
There are also plenty of influencers who are pro-iPhone because Android is garbage
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There are also plenty of influencers who are pro-iPhone because Android is garbage
[citation needed]
People listen to techies though... (Score:3)
No, people may not be interested in building a custom ROM, or even rooting a device, but if their techie friend warns them that the phone from FooTel will ship with adware and spyware that they can't get rid of, and uploads their intimate pictures to some site overseas, they will eschew that phone for something more trustworthy.
I have had people ask a brand provider recommendation more than once, and privacy is a big concern, even for the people who are relatively clueless about tech stuff. They may not be
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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.
I think that you are overstating the numbers here. People who root their phones likely don't have any friends to influence.
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Makes a change from the septic tanks and their Russian masters spying on us I suppose.
No, not really, Russia is also ruled by Oligarchs and Kleptocrats and the Chinese are spying on you too. Meanwhile the US is ruled by an egomaniac real estate mogul and a billionaire boys club and the NSA is spying on everybody.
No sizable number of their customers care (Score:4, Interesting)
They are the second biggest phone manufacturer.
They shipped 150m phones in 2017 and are going to ship 200m phones in 2018.
XDA has a total of 6.6m users in total. Lets ignore that most of those users are inactive, and that most of them won't be about huawei phones. Lets also assume people buy a phone every 2 years.
That means that, in a completely ridiculous use case which we know is overblown, under %2 of their user base will be effected.
It's more likely well under %0.01 of their actual handsets.
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All the more reason to allow the rooting, and all the more reason to suspect something stinks if they change policy about a tiny fraction of their user base.
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XDA has a total of 6.6m users in total. Lets ignore that most of those users are inactive, and that most of them won't be about huawei phones. Lets also assume people buy a phone every 2 years.
That's an enormous amount of assumptions there. Based on?
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XDA has a total of 6.6m users in total. Lets ignore that most of those users are inactive, and that most of them won't be about huawei phones. Lets also assume people buy a phone every 2 years. ... That means that, in a completely ridiculous use case which we know is overblown, under %2 of their user base will be effected.
Besides the assumptions other have already commented on, what makes you think only active XDA users care about unlocking their phones? I don't have an account on XDA, but just the same I've passed over otherwise attractive phones before because they couldn't be unlocked without begging permission from the manufacturer. (Huawei was already disqualified due to requiring device-specific unlock codes, which they could stop providing at any time.)
Re: Oh? I'll find a new manufacturer then (Score:2)
Custom Roms, and Android (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Sorry, but "loyal customer base" means 1% (Score:1)
the other 99% of the customers only care about a great phone at a great price. They are simply not interested in "modding" or tweaking the phone.
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the other 99% of the customers only care about a great phone at a great price. They are simply not interested in "modding" or tweaking the phone.
Yes, we know that most people are dumb.
That doesn't make us want to fall in line.
Caving to Google pressure (Score:4)
I bet that they are member of the Google android manufacturer club or whatever name they use like Open Hanset Alliance. There were a number of articles documenting Google trend to reduce Android fragmentation. It leads them to go away from the open source philosophy and values [arstechnica.com].
I bet that Huawei is simply caving on this pressure with the same effect on the open source side.
Re:Caving to Google pressure (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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What they fail to understand is that people do not buy a phone BECAUSE of Touchwiz, they buy it IN SPITE of have Touchwiz.
While you point at Touchwiz you're really talking about buying a lexus and then complaining that the glove-compartment is a bit difficult to open. The special sauce goes far beyond their shitty home screen and any idiot happily replaces those with one of the many that are found in the app store. It's one of the primary reasons I can't get excited about Android OS upgrades. Oooooh Oreo came out with feature X. Hurrah.... My phone already did X.
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
Both of those were quite solid phones. On the other hand the seve
Xiaomi a good alternative (Score:4, Informative)
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 (Score:2, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Sony, too (Score:1)
Itâ(TM)s possible to back up the DRM keys before you unlock.
They also arenâ(TM)t essential to the operation of the phone
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Xiaomi has an easy process to get them unlocked
Props for Xiaomi of course, but truth be told the process is anything but easy. Last 3 times I did it the process involved waiting for days and reading things in Chinese.
Motorola did it right with the Moto G. You asked for unlock and they would give you the unlock code on the spot. That's what easy looks like.
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If it was done "right" you wouldn't need to ask for an unlock code at all. Look at OnePlus for example. No unlock code required, you simply unlock the bootloader and root as desired.
Every manufacturer making you beg them for a code is simply trying to remind you who really owns the phone, and it's not you.
EMUI is the real issue (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:EMUI is the real issue (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Anyway, I've used both Samsung and LG phones and I don't find their modifications to Android annoying or hard to use. I guess 99% of non power users don't care either if their phone has those or pure Android.
My point is: I don't think pure Android is better than manufacturer versions (at least those I've tried), just different.
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was interested in a Huawei device, because some have good features, are priced well and get fair updates.
until i found out they do a custom interface (EMUI) on top of android.
didn't want anything to do with it anymore, i've never seen any android device with a custom ui that works well.
What's the point? (Score:1)
All these unlocked phones still don't provide their android repos, so you can't really customize shit, unless you somehow have access to all their firmware too.
Even then you are basically stuck only replacing the kernel, and maybe some shitty parts of the OS.
Can't replace any of the interesting parts.
Would you still receive the OTA update if... (Score:1)
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No, you won't.
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EMUI is crap (Score:2)
I have been using android and custom ROMs since the HTC magic (the first android device you could buy here).
I have a P20 pro, bought it because you could unlock it, and lineage OS would run on it, and on top you could still use the stock Huawei camera app. This gives me best of both worlds, the device and the camera is fantastic, but the software is horrible (I tried to use it for 1 week before giving up):
* they implemented some kind of process freezing that makes you lose notifications (I had this with han
The difference between Unlocking and Rooting (Score:2)
A smartphone is essentially 2 things
- A phone
and
- A computer
Unlocking refers to the phone part of the computer. For some strange reasons Americans buy phones only from their telecom service provider (that's like buying light bulbs only from your utility company). So the telecom provider locks the phone to their network. Unlocking allows you use the phone with other networks
Rooting is process getting admin privileges on the computer part of your smartphone
Why are these 2 terms used interchangeably in the art
Re:The difference between Unlocking and Rooting (Score:5, Informative)
Rooting is a different thing. Custom firmware isn't necessarily rooted.
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It goes even further than this: So called "unlocking" has two flavors. One thing is unlocking a phone for using with any telco. Other thing is unlocking the phone bootloader, that is what really enables flashing custom firmwares.
You can have a unlocked Telco agnostic phone, but still be unable to flash custom roms. My guess is that the author don't have experience with any of it, and thus naturally make a mess of it all.
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For some strange reasons Americans buy phones only from their telecom service provider
At least until a few years ago, there was general financial incentive to do so, as Verizon/Sprint/AT&T offered low prices on phones with new plans as well as 18 month/2 year "free" upgrades, plus they tended to be diligent with warranty repairs. At the same time, the non-major carriers tended to have godawful coverage, forced users to spend far more up front and provided next to no support.
Then around 2013 or so, with smartphones becoming the norm over all telecommunications devices, the major carriers
MVNO (Score:1)
Closed system (Score:2)
Biting the hand that feeds them (Score:2)
I'm "the tech guy" in my family, my extended family, and my huge circle of friends and professional colleagues. I'm also a higher-tier tech professional with influence both for my day job and as my side business.
Every single Android phone I've owned I've had root on.
Every single Android phone I've owned I've had an unlocked bootloader.
Every single Android phone (and most of my cell phones before) had MicroSD card slots.
These features are not only critical for the sort of stuff I need my phone to do, but als
Every Android Manufacturer will have to go (Score:2)
full Apple or corporate will not take a look at them.
iPhones are more manageable and more secure than Android phones (people who manage these devices at scale will tell you that).
Also iOS has better support for Exchange / O365 than Android and longer support for updates, which means you can draw out the replacement-cycle or at least re-issue the phones to "lower-tier" employees.
So, it's simple as that: get used to the unroot-able phone. If that is what draws you to Android because you can "fix stuff that Go
Unlocking still a must for me. (Score:2)
This is exactly the sort of outcome (Score:1)