Dunno who may want to know that, but if you want to bl unlock a global Xiaomi by bribery (you shouldn't be buying one in first place), then a certain unlock seller's channel suggests that Xiaomi internal (so for employees, duh) unlock policy now favors/mandates devices that were never activated before. It's logical that an employee would usually have a sane enough access to a fresh unit that needs conversion to engineering, but it's interesting to note who this change is targeted at (if it's an actual change rather than different kind of perm, that is).

Since this post failed to catch on, lemme provide one extra tidbit of the implications:

Soon, APKMirror will mostly be useful only to people who are either rooted or running microG (with signature spoofing). As these are the only means to bypass the ridiculous "free app licensing", which Google enables by default (opt-out) for all new apps.

Actually, I agree with the second comment

I think a big part of it is ironically about lockdown. Samsung stuff used to leak much more often, bypassing security features was a frequent occurrence, while they don't have a kind of insane authorization for what your unit is allowed to run (except ARB), and their way to cope with it is to stop users from unbricking their own devices, coincidentally serving the financial incentives once device is out of warranty.

In other words, there's so little you can do with an iPhone that they don't have to be afraid of offering everyone a straightforward way to unbrick. Other OEMs would love the same level of lockdown, but lack the willpower, instead deciding that unbricking is a backdoor for the privileged, despite the implications of right to repair laws.

BTW, if that isn't obvious, the phone market could be fixed with a single law: just allow users to run any bootloader akin to status quo of PCs. Suddenly, the stuff like the above would improve dramatically too. If to narrow down such a law to include the ability of verified dual booting (where you're still attested while on stock, but have a working alternative system alongside), mobile Linux would start to thrive overnight, as the penalty for using it would only last as long as your session. The eww apps would no longer require a separate device, but merely a reboot.

Guess who made this pic

Wrong answers:
- me
- Gemini

On recently (June?) updated apps, this no longer works. Not logged in MicroG still does.

The background is:
<Let's hope Google doesn't patch it at least for a year>

There's a different Photon Camera and it takes straightforward bracketed raws.
https://github.com/bjzhou/PhotonCamera

Disadvantage: motion easily causes purple/green artifacts. Highlights can sometimes clip before white level (and turn purple). Despite that, definitely refreshing.

Indians are writing an exam soon (or right now?), so that Google keeps doing everything their government asks for xD

Sony just casually posted a wildly dishonest/incompetent trippy video to sell a genuinely relevant technology

The fun part? Now that iOS devices are getting actual RAW (and RAW-based) video through third party app devs who finally started moving, it'll no longer gather the headlines the official, fake RAW video got on Apple's announcement. It'll be a mere curiosity, while lots of "professionals" will stay with the former, size-inefficient implementation.

Third message in a row: yes, as soon as I'll see a video comparing ISP-processed RAW with actual RAW video on iPhone 17 Pro, I'll link it here. From what I've seen from actual RAW photos (such as from Bayer Cam), the sensor mode exposed for third party apps is a quite clean 12-bit, likely not through LN2/LN4 or DCG, but through 12-bit ADC mode (so not best DR-wise, but nice). This may end up with better results even in a static scenery. At smaller file size.