Mandatory labels on smartphones and tablets in the EU now let consumers compare their battery life, durability, and repairability ratings before purchase.
This makes me worried about the ultra cheap Chinese manufacturers. I mean the likes of Unihertz, Umidigi, Ulefone, Doogee, Oukitel, etc
Usually these don’t get updates at all.
Even weirder, for example I have Ulefone Armor 24. They used to ship with Android 13. They still advertised it with Android 13 when I bought it. Mine like a few others have said arrived with Android 14, but the earlier ones aren’t offered A14 update. Someone on Reddit contacted support about this and they replied that they don’t provide cross-level upgrades because Google doesn’t allow them to release those to end users.
Anyway, point is, they save on everything possible, starting with software updates. And I have doubts about them changing this, unless EU is a large market for them.
They’ll likely require you to import them. Buying them from the UK or even China would circumvent these new rules. Though spending a couple hundred on a phone with zero updates is wild to me.
I honestly just fear updates at this point. They always seem to break more stuff than fix, the only exception to that for me has been PixelExperience custom ROM (discontinued).
Edit: Android is simply missing proper backups. Bad update on my laptop? Timeshift. Bad update on stock Android? It is what it is.
First Moto G5s Plus which got high battery drain, sluggishness and crashes after Android 8.1 update. This was bad enough I had to fix it with custom ROM. Then Poco X3 Pro which reportedly had issues with performance after MIUI 13 update, so I stayed on older software. Now my Ulefone Armor 24, which only has one update primarily to fix Google pay, but also brings a newer security patch, reportedly causing many crashes that make the phone unreliable and a bad experience.
Also many Samsung phones had an update that removed access to manual band mode selection, and if I recall correctly, that update didn’t even revert them to default.
It’s not the best for security, but I basically now just fear any updates. If everything works, then it can only be broken.
Maybe I should at least somehow start checking known vulnerabilities. As of recently, I should probably stop using applock on my outdated Ulefone
Exposed ”com.pri.applock.LockUI“ activity allows any other malicious application, with no granted Android system permissions, to inject an arbitrary intent with system-level privileges to a protected application. One must know the protecting PIN number (it might be revealed by exploiting CVE-2024-13916)
This makes me worried about the ultra cheap Chinese manufacturers. I mean the likes of Unihertz, Umidigi, Ulefone, Doogee, Oukitel, etc
Usually these don’t get updates at all.
Even weirder, for example I have Ulefone Armor 24. They used to ship with Android 13. They still advertised it with Android 13 when I bought it. Mine like a few others have said arrived with Android 14, but the earlier ones aren’t offered A14 update.
Someone on Reddit contacted support about this and they replied that they don’t provide cross-level upgrades because Google doesn’t allow them to release those to end users.
Anyway, point is, they save on everything possible, starting with software updates. And I have doubts about them changing this, unless EU is a large market for them.
They’ll likely require you to import them. Buying them from the UK or even China would circumvent these new rules. Though spending a couple hundred on a phone with zero updates is wild to me.
I honestly just fear updates at this point. They always seem to break more stuff than fix, the only exception to that for me has been PixelExperience custom ROM (discontinued).
Edit: Android is simply missing proper backups. Bad update on my laptop? Timeshift. Bad update on stock Android? It is what it is.
First Moto G5s Plus which got high battery drain, sluggishness and crashes after Android 8.1 update. This was bad enough I had to fix it with custom ROM. Then Poco X3 Pro which reportedly had issues with performance after MIUI 13 update, so I stayed on older software. Now my Ulefone Armor 24, which only has one update primarily to fix Google pay, but also brings a newer security patch, reportedly causing many crashes that make the phone unreliable and a bad experience.
Also many Samsung phones had an update that removed access to manual band mode selection, and if I recall correctly, that update didn’t even revert them to default.
It’s not the best for security, but I basically now just fear any updates. If everything works, then it can only be broken.
Maybe I should at least somehow start checking known vulnerabilities. As of recently, I should probably stop using applock on my outdated Ulefone
https://cert.pl/en/posts/2025/05/CVE-2024-13915/
Though my device has AppLock v14, so I am not sure.