yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] n1troV:
Excellent! I'm relatively new to the world of android phones and almost everybody here is pushing big-name-brand phones despite them having worse specs purely for the brand recognition (I suppose?) I've come to conclusion that M3 offers good value/performance for the price you're paying, not without its fair share of shortcomings though. That's to be expected, I guess.

Thanks for saving me lot of time not having to search answers for each questions I had. It certainly helped getting answers directly from an owner of the mighty M3.

That usb 2.0 bottleneck situation is understandable though. There are $1k devices on the other side of the pond still utilizing usb2 protocol, so yeah.

I mostly agree with your argument on fingerprint sensor placement except I personally prefer rear-mounted sensors mostly due to the fact that those got large surface area to work with and tends to be more accurate and quick. Usually your index finger sits there so its only natural to unlock the device as you pick it. Only downside is not able to unlock when device is on table.

Side mounted sensors on the other hand solve that issue but depending on the placement, it might be hard to reach specially on big phones. Having a hole cut on the side of the frame shouldn't help in terms of structural rigidity either. Eitherway I'd pick any capasitive implementation over gimmicky in-display sensor in a heartbeat. :)
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] cbw:
@n1troV I just remembered that I could also do a read/write speed test on my old phone (Redmi 4X), it has LPDDR3 RAM and emmc 5.1 storage, the screenshot below shows the test results of Redmi 4X.

(POCO M3 has LPDDR4X RAM)

View attachment 5196447

Since you have not used Xiaomi phones before, I think you need to know that Mi and Redmi phones have the original MIUI launcher, and the MIUI launcher does not have an app drawer, but POCO phones only have the POCO launcher, it has an app drawer, and cannot be disabled.

I have tried to install the MIUI launcher on my M3, but it could not be installed, so the only ways to install MIUI launcher on POCO phones are installing a custom ROM, or root/installing a magisk module.
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] n1troV:
Hmm it turns out ufs based storage is still significantly faster, at least on the reads.

You brought up an interesting point on the launcher, does M3 use swipe up gesture to launch app drawer or it has an option to have that dedicated grid style icon?

I don't dig the stock icons/ui elements on the above mentioned phones though. As long as a 3rd party launcher can be installed with unread counts reliably shown without random crashes, it should be fine.

I've had friends who used Mi phones in the past that I got to have some hands on time with (can't recall the exact model names), most of them were either android go/one devices though. Miui based phones were from 2016-17 so I'm sure alot has changed since then.

EDIT:

I might consider flashing custom rom as my last resort option, specially if I found stock apps constantly phoning home. Preferably a privacy focused rom (graphene/lineage?) with bare essential apps and 3rd party store (aurora?) minus the google stuff. That is only if services like realtime notifications are unaffected. Also there's a steep learning curve as I've not done any of this before :(
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] cbw:
@n1troV The POCO launcher uses the swipe up gesture to open the app drawer, if you do not want to have an app drawer, there is a 3rd party launcher called Lawndesk, it can be installed and used on M3, and it can show unread counts after giving it the notification access permission.

Other 3rd party launchers can also be installed on the phone, but almost all of them have app drawers.

I had unlocked the bootloader of the phone and installed Magisk on it before, but it was difficult to update the phone with Magisk installed, so I reinstalled stock MIUI ROM and relocked the bootloader with Mi flash tool.

I am currently using NextDNS on the phone, because it is customizable, below is a screenshot showing blocked connections to Xiaomi. I have disabled all analytics options in the M3's system settings, I have also removed (debloated) all system apps that are related to analytics or system ads, but the phone still 'phones home'.

View attachment 5196649

I still prefer using the stock ROM and POCO launcher, at least I have blocked those connections with NextDNS.
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] n1troV:
Hey that's not what I mean. Remember before the swipe up gesture was a thing, there used to be an icon on the bottom row of the home screen that opened app drawer on tap? I was wondering if such option is present on M3 to use drawer icon instead of swipe up.

See, this is the kind of stuff that bothers me. You went through all the trouble navigating deep in system settings and opting out, yet it does sh!t like this in the background. In the screenshot you've attached, you seem to have narrowed down results to the requests made to domains that contain "mi" in it. Who knows what else its pinging :(

It's impractical for average user to go through each and every request phone is making as there is probably hundreds if not thousands of them. I really do believe that if you opted out of something it should not be pinging servers over the web period. Privacy is becoming a bigger and bigger problem every day yet most people ignore it entirely. I doubt average user would know or care about such sketchy behaviors of their "personal" devices.

tl:dr Probably not the best for privacy, at least not out of the box.
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] cbw:
POCO launcher does not have that option, but there is a small arrow that can be clicked to open the app drawer.

View attachment 5197055

I have found a 3rd party launcher called Apex Launcher, it still has the old Android icon for opening the app drawer, but I think the old version (3.3.3) of it is better than the current version.

I had to do it, because I also use other apps, and browse websites, so if I didn't do it, it would show a lot of domains, including the ones used by other apps and websites.

For browsing websites on the phone, I suggest that you can install an extension called ublock origin, but most mobile browsers don't support extensions. Kiwi Browser and Firefox Android (There is also a fork called Iceraven, it supports more extensions compared to Firefox) support extensions, so you can install extensions on them for privacy.
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] cbw:
I have just restarted the phone, cleared the log in NextDNS, and stopped using the phone for 25 minutes, I have only opened NextDNS's website with Kiwi Browser, below is a screenshot of NextDNS's log.

View attachment 5197045
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] n1troV:
Thanks for the update on stock launcher and possible third party options.

I understand that. Embedded trackers within apps is whole another story. I was more concerned about OS telemetry that cannot be disabled. There is no guarantee that the phone is pinging domains only have "mi" in it.

I am also aware that the mobile firefox has somewhat limited extension support. However adding more and more extensions doesn't exactly help with browser fingerprinting. In fact it makes matters worse as you stand out more compared to the "default" ff installations. uBo is my go to addon for adblocking on computers, will definitely have that on phone as well.

I suppose you're logged into google account and has sync enabled? I mean still its imperfect way to track ALL the requests phone is making specially when its on standby, and for such small period of time. Unless its connected to pi-hole or some sort of firewall/nw analyzer all the time, there's no way you can tell whats going on :(
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] cbw:
Yes I have enabled sync for my Google account. With DNS, I could not find a better way to track the requests, because DNS cannot tell which requests are coming from a specific app.

I have installed AdGuard to filter requests on my phone (with local VPN method), and I will post screenshots of blocked requests later.
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] cbw:
These are the blocked requests.

View attachment 5197399	View attachment 5197401	View attachment 5197403	View attachment 5197405
View attachment 5197409	View attachment 5197411	View attachment 5197413	View attachment 5197415
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] cbw:
Xiaomi Cloud (and Cloud Backup), Xiaomi Service Framework, and System Apps Updater can be uninstalled using Szaki/XiaomiADBFastbootTools.

It is possible to use Android Debug Bridge (adb) to uninstall Google Play Services, but I do not know if it is safe to do it.

After searching online about uninstalling the Mi Account app, I found this.

https://gist.github.com/Biswa96/81fe477079fa5279f7cfd7b98d5519c7
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] n1troV:
Hey, thanks for saving the day, again! I'm so glad the first person to reply to my thread happens to be somewhat privacy conscious. :D

Exactly! Unfortunately same thing applies for network activity monitors. Pi-hole seem to have a decent dashboard, probably 3rd party hardware firewalls too.

I'm not planning to log into any third party services. Probably not even google on setup wizard.

I was wondering, is there a way to sandbox apps in android? As in you could isolate app data from one another and have full control over each app as to whether it's getting access to internet/gps and whatnot. I heard Shelter does this, not sure how that works exactly.

Unrelated to privacy: does the stock launcher has option to "lock homescreen grid"?
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] cbw:
It will cause bootloop in MIUI.

I also saw this in Shelter's description.

If I want to test apps without installing them on my phone, I use a virtual machine app called "VMOS Pro", it works well on my M3, but it sends analytics data to several servers, and there is no option to disable that.

By the way, POCO launcher also sends data to two different severs, "api.accelerator.intl.miui.com" and "api.ad.intl.xiaomi.com", so you might want to avoid using it, POCO launcher can be uninstalled using adb or XiaomiADBFastbootTools.

Yes.

View attachment 5198123
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] cbw:
The phone supports Project Treble with VNDK 29.0, with an A-only system partition, its CPU architecture is 64-bit ARM. So it should be possible to install AOSP-based custom ROMs with GSIs, although I have not tried it.

To unlock the bootloader, you need to bind a Mi account in the phone's developer options, and wait for 15 days.

After 15 days, the bootloader can be unlocked with Mi Unlock in fastboot mode, all data will be erased after unlocking the bootloader.

Edit: If you unlock the bootloader, it is possible that the Widevine security level will drop to L3, and with Widevine L3, DRM content can only be played at 480p. There are also apps that detect root or unlocked bootloader, they will not allow users to continue using them if root/unlocked bootloader is detected.
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] n1troV:
Hmm I saw the warning on Shelter for Miui based devices, its like xiaomi themselves say "no" to privacy isn't it?

Thanks for this. What I was looking for is something that can be used in realtime. Like containerization on computers where apps/services can be isolated to their own containers without using too much resources. Do we have similar implementations on android?

This is terrible. Do you have any stock widgets that require internet access or that "swipe left" card view screen from home screen that generates random news content? If that's not the case I'd draw the line then and there. :/

This is intriguing. Are these the same images that google themselves offer to odms? if not, who are the developers and have they had a good track record in the past not pushing malicious code or sketchy ownership transfers? I learned my lesson trusting popular foss browser extension off of github that the owner later sold to third party silently only to get users' session cookies sent to new owners. Definitely don't want this level of privacy nightmare on my mobile os.

Also do these images have gapps preloaded? If I were to install custom rom, I'd like it to be 100% de-googled. Only the core services that's required for basic functions to work, and possibly foss system apps that won't ping remote servers.
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] cbw:
Besides Shelter, the only sandbox environment for Android that I could find is Island. In it's setup guide, there are steps for installing it on MIUI, but I am not going to try it on my phone, because I don't know if it will cause any problems.

I have disabled the swipe left screen (Google Discover), the only widget I have on my screen is the one that shows the time and weather, but I think even without widgets, the launcher would still connect to those servers.

There are GSI ROMs from Google, but custom ROMs are modified, many of them are modified from AOSP.

No, Google services are not included. Users who want to use Google Play on those ROMs can choose to flash Open GApps. You can read information about it on LineageOS Wiki.
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] Noru29:
Waiting for an AOSP Rom for our phone... with microg and Aurora, no worries about Google and Xiaomi craps. My Redmi 3S is fully fonctionnal with that, hope my Citrus will be soon too.
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] Noor Sindhi:
I use two keyboards. Grammarly for writing English and Microsoft swiftkey keyboard for Urdu. In other phones, Samsung Infinix, etc. the current keyboard shortcut is below the keyboard. But I didn't find the shortcut current keyboard change in Poco m3.

How do I solve the current keyboard shortcut problem in Poco m3?
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] cbw:
To choose the current keyboard, you can pull down from the top (status bar) to see the notifications, when you start typing, and there is one notification that you can tap to choose the input method.

If you do not see this notification, you need to enable the keyboard in the system settings, go to settings, more settings, language and input method, mange input methods, at there you can enable the other keyboards you installed.
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] n1troV:
Apologies for the late reply, some life-stuff came up.

It's alright mate. You've shared many interesting ideas.

It's kinda crazy how a simple app like the launcher is doing this.

So the phone can function without gapps? As in push notifications without google services? Also does the gapps "pico" add any type of api keys/unique identifiers that could link back to me? My goal is to either manually sideload apks or have a privacy respecting 3rd party store, but services like notifications has to be there.

I somehow forgot to quote this reply. Is this how bootloader unlocking work for every brand or is it a xiaomi only thing to bind an account to the phone? If i have the option not to provide emails/names/phone numbers/imeis, I prefer to do that way. Even better if they accept throwaway mail addresses.

That's not a dealbreaker for me, although its good to know.

Can you give some examples? Will encrypted mail/im apps like signal/session/protonmail/tutanota continue to work?

This is the way!
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] cbw:
Yes, Android will work without Google services, notifications will still work without Google services.

Apps can be sideloaded with apk files.

You can choose to install a custom ROM that does not have Google apps, and you can just use it without any Google apps.

Open GApps is for people who want to use the Google Play store on custom ROMs, so you don't need it.

It's only for Xiaomi phones, you need to have a real email with a real phone number (with mobile data), for binding a Mi account to the phone. Xiaomi wants to make unlocking the bootloader difficult, and for the reason and steps for unlocking, you can read this thread.

I do not know much about other brands' bootloaders, but some Android phones have bootloaders that can be unlocked easily with the command "fastboot oem unlock".

The apps that will check for unlocked bootloader/root are banking apps, e-wallet apps, and the McDonald's app.

I have not used any apps you mentioned above, but most messaging apps will not detect root.

It is possible to hide unlocked bootloader/root with Magisk installed.
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] Temp_Quack:
If someone does try shelter and it works I would be defo interested in using it .

Anyway I feel theres a lot of crap that isnt including in the xiami adb remover package which can be removed using adb , especially google crap but really I feel its all not that much worth it, best solution always will be wait for a non gapps custom rom imo. But yes for now I will debloat as much as I can !

Maybe we can compile a list of safe to remove / stop background services etc from the phone ?
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] Temp_Quack:
On a side note does anyone know how to get rid of these two notifications ? I don't want to do the setup with fingerprint !

Also play store automatically started installing google apps in the name of ' completing setup ' , so I cancelled apps from install screen so now its stuck !

Also is there way to clean up storage of play store and other apps ? Most apps show 0 storage when I check in apps
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] cbw:
You can use adb to disable the Android Setup app, with the package name com.google.android.setupwizard.

adb shell pm disable-user --user 0 com.google.android.setupwizard
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] cbw:
Open the Security app, go to Manage apps, and choose the app to clear data.
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] Temp_Quack:
Well all the apps like whatsapp there show 0 b data and storage hence can't clear
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] cbw:
You can try this.
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] Temp_Quack:
Also is it okay to disable security center ? Seems like it has all the unwanted permissions
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] Temp_Quack:
Thanks ! worked
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] cbw:
No, uninstalling/disabling it will cause bootloop in MIUI.

Uninstalling find device will also cause bootloop.
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] Temp_Quack:
Yeah thought so, I think I have uninstalled most useless but safe to remove services now I think ! Except xiaomi keyboard / facemoji. Seems like its a system app !

Thanks for the help !
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] Temp_Quack:
Hey last question ! my ultra battery saver option is greyed out as in i cant select it and also in battery saver I am not able to select ' App Battery Saver ' , could that be because of something I uninstaller / stopped ?
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] cbw:
I think to use it, you need to re-install Battery & performance "com.miui.powerkeeper" and Power Detector "com.xiaomi.powerchecker", I am not sure if you will need both or just one of them, you can try.
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] Temp_Quack:
Thanks reinstalling powerkeeper fixed ' App Battery Saver ' , although ultra battery saver still doesnt work apparently searching around it gets fixed with factory update which I dont want to do so ill live without it I guess
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] cbw:
HI, Ultra Battery Saver still works on my M3, even after debloating, have you tried to also re-install Power Detector, to see if that works?

I am using MIUI Global 12.0.4.0.
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] cbw:
By the way, you can install a keyboard you want to use first, and uninstall that keyboard, by using the adb command "adb shell pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.facemoji.lite.xiaomi.gp” .

Some of the pre-installed apps can be uninstalled from the Security app, in manage apps.
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] Temp_Quack:
I was on 12.0.3, just updated now to 12.0.4

Will try in sometime but I don't really need ultra battery saver Anyway. Must have been something I removed I guess when debloating causing it !

I tried that adb command after installing keyboard I think but didn't work for me. Will try again !

Anyway, everything works now except I keep getting message sometimes gallery has stopped. Its probably due to something I removed as well !

Phone is butter smooth now though ! Just camera I haven't tried gcam which I will later.
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] cbw:
If you have only debloated apps that are safe to debloat, the ones shown in XiaomiADBFastbootTools, debloating shouldn't cause that issue.

My M3 doesn't have that issue after debloating, but the gallery app had another issue of not being able to view photos.

What I did to make it work again was, to update MIUI Gallery manually from apkmirror, after that the app won't open, but I could go to MIUI's manage apps, and choose to uninstall updates of the gallery app, and the gallery app works again after that.

I had to use this method, because MIUI doesn't allow clearing data of the gallery app.
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] Temp_Quack:
I might have removed extra things from adb other than debloater tool. I already tried doing what u said but gallery still crashes its linked to one of the cloud services I think !

Is there any way to completely remove gallery ? Else I all just reinstall the services linked to gallery !
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] cbw:
If you have installed another gallery app, you can try doing that.

Use the adb command "adb shell pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.miui.gallery” to uninstall MIUI gallery, and use the command " adb shell cmd package install-existing com.miui.gallery" to re-install it if needed, I found these commands from this article.

On my phone, I still have Xiaomi Service Framework installed, since I use it to sync my contacts and notes.

I think you can try re-installing it, because in MIUI gallery settings, there are sync cloud photos options.
[POCO M3 Questions & Answers] Temp_Quack:
Yup uninstalled gallery had already installed simple gallery pro before , guess will reinstall if there are any issues. just ultra power missing now which i dont care about much .
[Samsung Galaxy S20 FE Questions & Answers] wingmann:
Hi... I am pretty sure this is a general Samsung Galaxy line question, but I own the FE so I hope it's OK that I post my question here. A couple of years back Samsung removed the ability to pick a custom text notification soundbyte for numbers in your Contacts (the setting was in CONTACTS, just under the ability to pick a custom ringtone for CONTACTS. It upset a lot of folks (certainly I'm one of them), and I know there are several posts out there on other sites to this effect. Is there is anything that can be done? I didn't see any question/answers on this topic in XDA so far, but I'm hoping (praying) that someone here knows of or has a fix to remedy this? Samsung eventually did eventually put in a way to put a custom soundbyte to "Conversations" in the "Messages" text app but it's not the same thing. If a person has a one on one conversation with a contact, then this option for Samsung works fine. But if that same person becomes part of a group text, then the custom soundbyte does not work/apply since that contact is now in a different conversation. (It DID work the old way before Samsung dropped it). I'm told there "was" an app that solved this problem ("there's an app for everything"), but I can't find it and it may have been discontinued. Anyone know of a way to do this again? An app or Mod? Please? Calling Samsung on this issue is an exercise in futility, since the reps that answer don't always much more that the scripts they are provided. Thank you all in advance
[ASUS ZenFone 7 / 7 Pro Questions & Answers] Jkm15:
Recently rooted my new Zenfone 7. Is it possible to remove Bootloader unlocked Warning message at the start up of the system? Thanks for an answer.
[ASUS ZenFone 7 / 7 Pro Questions & Answers] Joeb2000:
re-lock the bootloader

Boot into fastboot, then send this command from your pc.

fastboot oem asus-lock

how did you get root to work? I followed the instructions listed and it would not work for me.
[ASUS ZenFone 7 / 7 Pro Questions & Answers] Jkm15:
I followed the instructions there: https://xdaforums.com/t/recovery-official-twrp-for-asus-zenfone-7-series.4161719/ in fastboot mode you should update android drivers manually through device manager to get it work otherwise you'll get " waiting on device " error and it won't flash TWRP.