Xiaomi is taking seriously that HyperOS is a proprietary operating system, even though its foundations are based on Android. New news from China: unlocking the bootloader will be an odyssey in HyperOS and, if you do, you will not be able to receive operating system updates.
It is an important cold water that closes the door to communities such as Xiaomi.eu, which has been working for years on popular modified ROMs with less bloatware and proprietary Xiaomi services. The company wants HyperOS not to be modified, and the obstacles it will put to achieve this are not few.
First of all, in case you are not familiar with the term, the bootloader is the bootloader of Android phones. Its mission is to make certain checks when the device starts, as well as to give instructions to the system to boot. By default, it is always locked. If we unlock the bootloader we can modify this boot information, which opens the door to install a custom recovery and change the ROM.
Xiaomi has confirmed on Android Authority that unlocking the bootloader of devices with HyperOS will be synonymous with losing the ability to receive new operating system updates. Until now, as long as you kept the original recovery, you could continue to receive MIUI updates even if you had unlocked the bootloader.
The thing goes further, and is that even in the case that we want to unlock the bootloader, the task will not be simple. For some time now Xiaomi has put the time lock. It was necessary to ask permission from the page of my unlock, as well as wait a few days to authorize the operation.
The new conditions are as follows:
- Reach level five on the Xiaomi community website.
- Perform a real verification of our identity
- Actively participate in the forum by answering questions from users.
- We will only be able to unlock up to three devices per year.
- Having the bootloader unlocked means not receiving operating system updates.
These conditions, for the moment, refer to the Chinese ROM and are reflected in the bootloader unlock policy in their home country. It is to be hoped that the European ROM may be subject to a somewhat more lax policy, although it is unlikely considering that the bootloader unlocking method is usually shared between ROMs.