Xiaomi also has bad news for MIUI users who wish to unlock their smartphones, saying they won’t get updated to HyperOS.
“Previous operating systems, such as MIUI 14, still retain the ability to unlock, but users will no longer receive any Xiaomi HyperOS updates if they leave their devices in an unlocked state,” the company told us.
The Chinese brand clarified in a follow-up email that HyperOS updates won’t be available if you’ve unlocked your phone’s bootloader, regardless of whether you’re on MIUI 14 or HyperOS. However, the company said you’ll receive HyperOS updates if you choose to lock your device again. This applies to all Xiaomi devices outside of China.
I rarely say this, but with this new “HyperOS” skin being the most blatant iOS ripoff I’ve ever seen, just get an iPhone if you want that experience that badly.
As a system is does have some nice bits and bobs. For example I really like the ability to install the same app multiple times, each sandboxed from the other. This was a great feature when I had to straddle two numbers for WhatsApp!
But it’s a surprising move as they have an active community that is Encouraged to buy the Chinese device then apply the global ROM to get English and localisation. A willing beta test community is difficult to build, especially when you get it without any formal support overhead. (They will have people to manage that community ofc)
Adurbe,
Can you specify an alternate phone number in the sandbox?
I was dealing with an offshore team who wanted to do business on whatsapp because they didn’t want to call long distance. So whatever, I tried getting whatsapp to work but it turns out that whatsapp officially discriminates against non-mobile phone numbers, including my business number. I wasn’t about to use my personal cell phone number. I gave it to them strait: whatsapp would not accept with my business number so it was unusable. I made them choose something we could both use. So we used skype, which was a lot easier to use on the desktop anyway.
Yeah it can do exactly that. So you have one whatsapp with one number and another whatsapp with another the feature is called “dual apps”. It was Super useful!
big caveat: xiaomi devices may/may not now have Google’s Playstore and you soon wont be allowed to unlock your device to sideload the google services :-p
Adurbe,
There are a few times this would have been extremely useful for me.
I had an xiaomi phone in the past, but with such restrictions I’ll be looking elsewhere. When restrictions become normalized throughout the industry, this is when marginalized power users start getting into trouble. The fact that there are different vendors to choose from is only helpful if the differences are meaningful to our needs.
I want more diversity than this android and IOS duopoly, but it looks unlikely to change. The strongest candidate for something new may be a fuchsia platform. But given that it’s just another extension of google, I’m not sure how much value it really provides in terms of “alternatives”.
I’ve hit these unlocking restrictions myself.
Here’s a companion article.
https://www.androidpolice.com/xiaomi-doesnt-want-unlock-bootloader-hyperos-phones/
Oneplus took “up to 7 days to unlock”. They released the root unlock code after 7 days, down to the minute. Obviously that means they programmed a timer to wait a full 7 days. This is quite intrusive because we are dependent on them to make any progress and waiting on them for a full week after receiving a new phone before being able to install the preferred OS & applications isn’t reasonable.
Obviously I can’t recommend any manufacturers that put you through this crap, but what are we really going to do about it? They don’t really care that much whether we’re happy and we’re too small a market to make them care.