So I hate Samsung with a passion as their components and after purchase support is typically terrible. Also I don't need to support an aristocratic Chaebol and supporting a worker owned company feels better. I hate to bother people here, but info online isn't very clear.

Sorry for a list:

  1. So does Gmail actually integrate with HarmonyOS as well as Huawei promises?
  2. Do Firefox extensions work the same as on Andriod? (I can't find this answer online)
  3. Are there gonna be any serious disadvantages? I don't game on my phone. Nearly everything is Firefox, Gmail, and YouTube.
  4. Will Xi be disappointed with the volume of anime that I'm watching? Can I just pay a fine or do I need to turn up at the closest PLA overseas internment centre?
  • unperson [he/him]
    ·
    6 months ago

    I'm more partial to Xiaomi.

    Sure it's commendable that Huawei is a sanctioned Chinese cooperative with custom made CPUs pushing the boundary on 5G, but Xiaomi phones have very good specs for the price, big batteries, they are well constructed, easy to repair, the bootloader is unlockable, and they usually have snapdragon CPUs that work great with custom roms.

    • ButtBidet [he/him]
      ·
      6 months ago

      OK, that is helpful to know. Thank you. I might consider going that way.

    • mathemachristian [he/him]
      ·
      6 months ago

      With xiaomi relocking the bootloader is not possible according to DivestOS. Don't know support for huawei though

      • unperson [he/him]
        ·
        6 months ago

        Last time I checked, you could only unlock Huawei phones through exploits. And while you can re-lock Xiaomi phones, they will always show the screen telling you the system is corrupted on boot. They were having supply chain problems with resellers flashing malware to their phones.

  • Maoo [none/use name]
    ·
    6 months ago

    I'm partial to getting a phone you can put an aftermarket rom on. Are there any for Huawei devices?

    • ButtBidet [he/him]
      ·
      6 months ago

      On a Huawei phone? I'm pretty sure that GrapheneOS is only meant for Google phones. My problem is that my existing hardware is falling apart, and I'll need a new phone at some point. Thank you for your suggestion.

  • StellarTabi [none/use name]
    ·
    6 months ago

    An old version of firefox allowed arbitrary extensions, but they limited that a few years ago to a small list (the most important ones are in that list IMO) and whitelisted more recently a few weeks ago.

    You might get lucky with one of the forks if the default is not enough: https://github.com/Tobi823/ffupdater

    • StellarTabi [none/use name]
      ·
      6 months ago

      My understanding is that HarmonyOS is technically vaguely android under the hood, IDK but probably f-droid/ffupdater stuff will run seemlessly.