xiaomi-mi4-frontSay you pick up one of Xiaomi’s two new phones – the Redmi 3 or the Redmi Note 3 – and you’re thinking to yourself that you want to unlock the bootloaders of either device. Maybe you want to install some kind of custom ROM, for example. Unfortunately for you, it seems that Xiaomi has made the process a tad trickier than what most users would like.

Some companies have made it easy to unlock their phone’s bootloaders, but it seems that for Xiaomi devices, you’ll have to put in a request to unlock the bootloader of your phone. Not only will you have to wait anywhere between 3-21 days for confirmation, but you’ll have to put down the reason why you want to unlock the phone’s bootloader, and apparently you will also need to achieve a certain status on Xiaomi’s forums if you want the process to go faster.

Once approved, there are also reports that the unlock codes will take as long as 15 days before an SMS is sent to your device. This is versus other companies who have created tools on their websites in which you can unlock your phone’s bootloader in a matter of seconds. So what’s with the convoluted and unnecessarily complex process?

According to Xiaomi, they are experiencing issues where users purchase devices from unauthorized resellers which can sometimes result in fake devices with weird ROMs installed on them. The company claims, “This is really bad for user experience, and it might even cause property loss if some malware are installed.” We suppose there is some merit to their reasoning, but at the same time for users looking for a phone that’s quick and easy to unlock, either exercise some patience with Xiaomi’s process or look elsewhere.

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