Xiaomi_Redmi_10C.md

A honest Xiaomi Redmi 10C review focusing on what matters

A honest review focusing on what really matters in smartphones: Affordable price, reasonable performance and battery life, good software, no bloatware, ease of unlocking the bootloader, data protection and privacy. Most reviews on the net focus on superficial, unimportant stuff like an extra megapixel here or the form of the display notch there.

tl;dr: It is like Xiaomi is making it intentionally hard to get rid of their spyware-ridden, bloated firmware (requiring a SIM card, Mi account, Windows software, and a full week of waiting time). DO NOT BUY XIAOMI PHONES!

Looking at the sub-150 EUR mid range category, comparing with the Moto G31 and G22. The Xiaomi Redmi 10C has been for sale at ALDI in Germany for 139 EUR as of August 2022. (Actually, the Lenovo-owned company MEDION is distributing this phone to ALDI, what an irony that they are not selling their own Moto phones!)

Pros

• It comes with a charger (Motorola seems to be cheaping out on chargers these days, and no, you can never have enough chargers)
• Unlike the current Moto G31 and G22, it has a Snapdragon SOC so does this mean it performs better and has a longer runtime on one battery charge?
• It does not have a burn-in-prone OLED display which can and will wear and burn in (as seen on a Motorola G31 in a store today)
• In addition to 2 SIM cards there is a slot for a microSD card, unlike some other phones where you can only use 1 SIM card if you use the microSD slot

Cons

• After having looked at Xiaomi phones for a while, I was completely confused by what "Redmi" means vs. "Mi" vs. POCO, what "Note" means, what do "Lite" and "Pro" mean, and what do the various letters mean (e.g., "a", "c"). There are WAY too many models. And then even for one model, there are different configurations which can only be seen in the fine print, so it is up to chance wherther your Xiaomi Redmi 10C comes with 3 GB or 4 GB of RAM!
• Unlike Motorola and Gigaset, it does not come with a clear plastic sleeve
• The phone is even larger (higher) than my previous ones which I already thought were too big. Where are the phones in the size of the first iPhones?
• The software on the device is bloatware with no end. Tons of unwanted apps preinstalled. No way I will use it with the stock ROM!
• Not only Google spyware, but now also Xiaomi spyware mandatory(!) as part of the operating system(!) to use the device. When setting up the device for the first time, it tells you in clear words wich apps are collecting data on you, and you need to agree to the data collection. And it's not only Google's!
• Installing a less bloated operating system image requires unlocking the bootloader, which Xiaomi makes as hard as possible

Unlocking the bootloader

It seems like the usual way of unlocking the bootloader has been crippled by Xiaomi:

• In MIUI, enable Developer
• In Developer, enable OEM Unlock. Normally this should allow unlocking the bootloader but it seems like it does not work for Xiaomi phones? Google should really enforce that this is all it needs! See below the errors you get on the Xiaomi Redmi 10C if you do just this
• There is also MI Unlock status in the same menu as OEM unlock. This one wants to access "Mi Account, CPU ID, IMEI, IMSI" and wants to process this data according to https://privacy.mi.com/all/de_DE. Not gonna accept that! Is there no way to install a custom ROM without giving them all that information?
• Worse, it seems like you need Mi Unlock Tool, a Windows-only application to unlock the bootloader!
• There are horror stories that you have to wait 1 week until you get the bootloader unlocked.
• And you seem to need a Mi account to unlock the bootloader
• And according to this video you need a working SIM card for the unlock (not just WLAN)

After (just) enabling OEM Unlock in Developer, the bootloader indeed cannot be unlocked! These are the errors you will get:

# /usr/local/bin/fastboot flashing unlock
                                                   FAILED (remote: 'Token Verify Failed, Reboot the device
')
fastboot: error: Command failed

# /usr/local/bin/fastboot reboot fastboot
Rebooting into fastboot                            OKAY [  0.003s]
< waiting for any device >
Finished. Total time: 8.013s

# /usr/local/bin/fastboot flashing unlock
# Seems to hang forever

# /usr/local/bin/fastboot oem unlock
# Likewise, seems to hang forever

At this point, I give up. I need a phone now, not in one week. And I am not willing to use Xiaomi spyware, not will I be installing Windows on my computer just to be able to unlock the bootloader of this phone. Conclusion: It is like Xiaomi is making it intentionally hard to get rid of their spyware-ridden, bloated firmware (requiring a SIM card, Mi account, Windows software, and a full week of waiting time). DO NOT BUY XIAOMI PHONES!

By comparison, this is how to unlock the bootloader on a Samsung Galaxy A13. How it ought to be. No accounts, no Windows tools, no SIM card needed!

And LIDL has the Galaxy A13 for 139 EUR...

Edit 01/2024 The Moto G52 has a Snapdragon and seems to be well supported by 3rd party ROMs.

Edit 12/2024 The Moto G34 has a Snapdragon and seems to be well supported by 3rd party ROMs. It is available for under 90 EUR. It has 5G (not that anyone needs it), a headphone jack (important), and NFC.

It seems like the usual way of unlocking the bootloader has been crippled by Xiaomi:

That's how I unlocked my Xiaomi 4x. Except that it's all pointless. I tried to root the phone, but the banking apps refuse to work with rooted phones (not Xiaomi's fault). Also, Xiaomi has some kind of kernel issue. The custom kernel goes into a loop after a reboot. I guess I was just unlucky.

When I run out of a 1 year warranty on the 10c, I will unlock it as well.

DO NOT BUY XIAOMI PHONES!

It's better not to buy any phones then. All smartphones are proprietary hardware without any specifications. That's why the custom Android OS are rare. The normies are fine with this.

We need laws at the country level or even the EU, so that the user has access to the specs of the device he bought. This would finally solve the problem of the lack of NVidia open-source drivers (nouveau does not count) and smartphones.

The law should at least allow customers to uninstall any software from the device that came preinstalled, and to remove all technical measures that prevent or make it more tedious/harder to install custom software.

The law should at least allow customers to uninstall any software from the device that came preinstalled, and to remove all technical measures that prevent or make it more tedious/harder to install custom software.

Yes, in this regard, there is already a practice of applying such laws. Apple seems to have been forced by law to use USB Type-C on their phones.

You have a point where you mention how difficult it is to unlock the bootloader, but at least you have to be grateful that you can still do it (yes, I'm talking to you, Huawei)

If you want to run a custom OS on a phone, you are going to have to select the phone to suit the OS you want to run. For instance, Graphene only supports Google Pixel devices as it is written to repurpose the security features of those devices to create a super-hardened OS.

In the case of Pixels, there have been some "unlocked" phones sold at Best Buy that were former/unsold Verizon phones. While these work with any carrier with the stock OS, they have to connect to the Internet once (though without anything being input) to unlock the bootloader and some versions needed a system update to fix a bug first. None of the unlocked Pixels sold elsewhere were reported to have that issue, as the carrier string was NULL not Verizon. Some of the Best Buy Pixels and all of the others would unlock the bootloader without issue. It's probably best to avoid Best Buy for phones of any make, as Best Buy is probably buying other models too from Verizon at a discount.

You don't want any carrier's doctored phone and that goes double if you are keeping the original ROM and want to tether without having to resort to USB and Azilink.

I too would most certainly respond to a demand to submit personal information to unlock the bootloader by scrapping the phone if it's purpose was to run a custom ROM. For any other phone, disabling ADB or including the carrier's app would send the phone to the parts bin. I refuse to tolerate vendor spyware, so either it goes or the phone goes. I do not accept "nudges" from corporations! I am guessing stores would refuse to take it back, but if they did it would put pressure on the vendors to cut the shit.

Before buying a phone to do anything other than use all vendor apps as provided, do an online search to ensure others have been able to do what you want to do. If not, select another phone. This is a good idea with laptops too, to make sure you don't have to activate Windows to get to the UEFI menu or to install a firmware update that Linux won't boot without. Also watch for things like sound, wifi, and even touchpads that don't work under Linux.

what really matters in smartphones:

The operating system. Current choices:

• Apple's iOS (digital slavery)
• Google's Android (digital slavery but cheaper and not so obvious );

tl;dr: DO NOT BUY A BRAND NEW PHONE AT ALL!

Xiaomi is just a symptom, not the decease. They don't even produce anything, just "pack" chips, batteries, screens, software, etc together. And they need high volumes to do it cheap. Or subsidize production by selling data, commercial propaganda (aka advertising), etc. Unlocking boot loader is for developers to optimize their apps for Xiaomi phones, not the common folks to install custom ROMs and escape data collection, commercial propaganda (aka advertising), etc.

By comparison, Samsung serves both parties of the Apple-Google duopoly. That's why they don't care about Android at all. Less Android smartphones, more orders from Apple for iPhone components produced by Samsung );

Mentioning banking apps, I refuse to use them. Their security needs are incompatable with my own. One device cannot be simultaniously trusted by two people (in this case, you and the bankers).

I have chosen not to bank online or shop online at all, my hardware can thus be specialized for communications privacy and does not need to support any commercial or ad supported app or website. My phones and computers have never run any JS written by Meta, never been connected to a Google account, the works. If you need to bank or shop online, quarantine that in separate hardware or a live USB install for a desktop or laptop. Don't let them see your contacts, your files, or you location, and don't let anyone build a surfing or location history on you.

I also would prefer to buy all hardware bare and unprovisioned, with no OS at all same as my desktop motherboards. Zero subsidy, zero secondary monetization, vendor accepts that this is a cash and carry transaction from which they will never see another dime later, and prices the hardware accordingly. This is one reason I never buy carrier phones and in fact, I've never had contract phone service anyway.