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I have the black and white A5Pro.
The main 3 things to say here are:
1) The phone polls taobao.com and qq.com. Private DNS in settings has been deleted. VPNs don't reconnect reliably. This continues even after a debloat script is run. I don't know what app is doing it or whether it's baked in at system level.
You can only reliably block this problem by getting your DNS server settings from a DHCP server you control. You could conceivably do this by only connecting to your home WiFi, setting DHCP to NextDNS and blocking those domains.
2 wrongs don't make a right but actually it looks like the phone does a lot less spying than Google but I understand that while Google resells our data, maybe qq.com and taobao.com don't resell it as securely...?
2) The screen backlight has a low refresh rate and is bright white. I'd estimate equivalent to a 5000k bulb in colour.
Personally for me this isn't a deal breaker but if you need the backlight it's not as nice to read as a Kindle.
3) One click roots aren't safe and AFAIK rooting doesn't work. The 2accounts workaround didn't help me get all GApps working either and besides, why open your data to both China and Google
The phone is really good otherwise. It's just very Chinese in ways that westerners don't like. Viewing it from the Chinese market viewpoint I'd say Hisense have done a fantastic job. The bloatware and eink is really well done. Just a shame we can't use it
Because of the inability to block those tracking domains I can't replace my main phone so instead I'm carrying it as a spare like an ereader. However, unlike an ereader it can almost replace my phone. The problem is that I can't trust it so it's very limited what I can do with it.On reflection, I might prefer to just some other eink device that connects to my phone.
GApps install basically doesn't work. This is as close as I can get to making it a phone replacement:
- mirroring WhatsApp messages to Telegram via a bot, even though WhatsApp is installable on the A5
- syncing files with Syncthing
- accessing a rooted phone via Airdroid
- Nextcloud and Webdav calandar/contacts/etc is possible but I don't trust using the phone's built in contacts until those requests to qq.com/taobao.com are blocked. I don't want my trusted friends to get robocalls from Chinese scammers like other Chinese people I know
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