- Unlock bootloader (depending on vendor, you have to do an online verification),
- flash a recovery.img,
- load into recovery mode (which, depending on the phone, might need extra work)
- wipe some caches,
- select new os/rom image,
- pray it doesn’t brick your phone.
You’d think someone would’ve learned a thing or two from the easy graphical installations linux and even windows have been offering since the late 2000s.
Everyone around me uses iPhones and I hear no complaints. And the folks who buy Android tend to prefer Samsung here, which seems to get decent updates.
I’d never even heard of Redmi, but Googling it, it appears to be the entry level line of Xiaomi. When you buy a budget phone from an already budget brand, I’m not surprised that the user experience out of the box isn’t that great.
I’ve had Sony, Nexus and Samsung before. The consistent pattern was that they all had bloat on the phone, made software decisions that benefited them, not me, and after a certain age tended to slow down. I know Apple is even worse about that, so I never even consider them seriously.
I bought this phone because I could put the software I wanted on it (and it has an ear phone jack and SD card slot). I wouldn’t consider it if I couldn’t. My tendency to drop phones horribly also pushes me to a cheaper tier 😁.
I know I’m not the average user, but I’ve helped people with carrier phones that had fine hardware, but filled with shitty apps and services that were there to just harvest their money/information.
Samsung is riddled with bloatware.
It’s that bad these days? I’ve only had one Samsung phone, three phones ago, and it didn’t really have any bloatware on it, except their own Galaxy store app thing.