Xiaomi, phone home: Chinese everything shop currently making most sales on smartphones Over half of Chinese electronics, scooters and underwear corp Xiaomi's revenue came from smartphone sales, according to audited figures published today [PDF]. For now. Given the current situation for the world's mobe-makers, the fact that it also sells scooters and knickers probably doesn't doesn't sound so silly. Its …
Everything I have read about this scooter tells me that it was a piece of trash, made for the least buck possible.
Yet, you cannot blame Xiaomi for responding to the market. Not the market of individuals, of course, the market of pie-in-the-sky, probably-never-had-a-scooter-themselves morons who scooped them up by the hundreds to foist them upon the unsuspecting in the hope of making money - some day.
Look, I know that being disruptive is not easy. Not everyone can just profit from someone else's vehicle and time in exchange for vague promises and some loose change. Sometimes you have to put something on the line yourself. It's the good old "to earn money, you have to spend money". Then you check how much you have to spend to ensure a reliable service, and your accountant has a heart attack. So you go with this pile of crap and hope for the best, instead of realizing that, no, your idea was nice, but not economically feasible.
Oh well, at least Xiaomi got some money out of it.
What kind of surprises me is that ElReg does mention the eye brow raising part of Xiaomi's product range every time when it has news on the company. Missing there though is that they also have a considerable, pretty normal laptop range, which TBH is not that bad. No, they are not the absolute top of the line, super specced out, stuffed with the latest and greatest new, can not miss touch bars. But they are decent with a similar strong pricing philosophy as their mobs. If I look around in the lecture hall what students are (sorry, were) dragging in, it's clear that those lappies clearly have found their place on the market. And having seen one opened up, I can understand. Under the hood there are the same, usual suspects like Intel, Samsung, and so on, just like any A brand machine. Maybe not the latest and greatest iteration, but that's why students love their price so much. Although I must admit the influx of Xiaomi lappies was bigger 4 years ago, when their prices were still razor sharp, main MO being to wipe the Chinese windows on it completely and put *nix on it. Since then their price increased, and desirability decreased accordingly...
Because every piece of pre-installed software on xiaomi phones does exactly that. Use the IR blaster, it homes home, use the calculator, it phones home, before twrp was available for my current xiaomi phone I was running Net Guard no root firewall and it was blocking a constant stream of attempts from what looked like every apk on the phone to call home.
Thankfully there's plenty of support for ASOP roms, hardware can't be beaten for the price IMHO, but without installing an alternate ROM I'd not touch them with a barge pole
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