The Xiaomi company “cut off oxygen” to buyers of Chinese versions of its smartphones

Now, if the device was purchased in China, when trying to unlock the bootloader through the global Xiaomi account, the following message will appear: “account registration location does not match with the place of sale of the phone”.

This is bad news for those who are used to buying Xiaomi smartphones on sites like AliExpress, and then flashing the software to the global version. This helped to save sometimes up to a third of the cost of the device, since the Chinese versions are cheaper.

Now those who like to save will have to use the Chinese version of the smartphone, where there are only two languages: Chinese and English, and there are no Google services. And there will be fewer options for customizing the already installed firmware.

Previously, Xiaomi allowed unlocking the bootloader regardless of the place of purchase of the device and the region of the account. Now only users with Chinese accounts can unlock devices bought in China. At the same time, the gadgets are designed for the global market, and can still be unlocked using a global Xiaomi account.