chaircat

This send like the relevant bit:

Qualcomm said in a statement smartphone makers have “indicated a preference towards standards-based solutions” for satellite-to-phone connectivity.

“We expect to continue to collaborate with Iridium on standards-based solutions while discontinuing efforts on the proprietary solution that was introduced earlier this year,” the company said.

And why should you need permission to do this?

Xiaomi historically had a problem with resellers installing malware in custom ROM on their phones, so they started putting up more and more obstacles to unlocking the bootloader over time, while still providing an avenue for legitimate customers to unlock.

I don't know what spurred the current action though.

It's worse than that. All this China big brother talk is just a variant of xenophobia. It's a talking point they've been trained to slam their foreign "enemies" about without ever thinking about it at all of what the actual harm they're concerned about would look like.

This is such a eyerolling take based on stereotypes.

Before America banned Huawei, Huawei was widely recognized as having the best camera system on a phone. Under your worldview they can't invent anything themselves and somehow borrowed their way into being the best.

It's addressed in the article. It'll just share the credentials from your phone.

Name one modern phone >= the size of the legendary Sony Z Ultra.

Really annoys me how Android is always closing my apps in the background like how even I switch back to the browser it has to reload the whole page. More RAM sounds good to me!

Turns out it costs more to make things in Europe.

It seems useless if I was forced to unlock my phone by someone violent, like the police.

My life seems a great deal more boring and uneventful than most people around these parts.

Considering that leaks have come from militaries around the world that aren't allies, that seems pretty tinfoil hat.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the answer to the question that's posted all the time on gaming forums of: "Phones are so powerful these days, especially compared to the Switch, why can't we have real games on phones without microtransactions?"

it's that at any point a decision can be made which you have no control over

This is true for any software you didn't write. Plenty of FOSS software has gone in directions I didn't like.

The only real difference is whether decision makers have a profit motive. That's important, but that said, it's not everything.