The Pixel 8 Pro does NOT support high resolution output for most third party apps. Only the apps reliant on RAW10 streams will be able to capture a 48MP+ photo on P8P. Such an app needs to either output a DNG file only or include built-in processing before being able to save a JPEG or HEIC.





(I won't be posting too often in coming months, don't worry, channel isn't dead)

SHIFTphone 8, the upcoming device from a quite renowned (for its dev-friendliness) German company, will ship with secure boot on. This is contrary to their previous devices. Despite the initiatives like U-Boot and mainlining, only the company itself and an unspecified amount of developers will have an access to secure boot off units. Even if qualifying as a dev may happen to be easy, it's an unnecessary step that seems dictated by the choice to ship GMS.

Buyers deserve a choice of GMS-less, secure boot off units available directly. Getting a Google stamp has a significant per-unit cost, and it's unfair to force the users who don't take advantage of it to lose both that money and a part of their hardware ownership.

Should've mentioned it earlier, but it turns out the company actually says that "customers wanted it" (or at least that's what they said in a mail). No wonder, as the customers they are targeting seem to be older Germans (and good luck talking about threat models with them). It looks like to Shift, openness is more about efficiency than a principle.

To be clear, it isn't in my style to not post the source material, but I wouldn't want to sabotage any future communication between the people the screenshots come from and Shift (if somehow this blows up a little). Shift is still better than average, and maybe their decision isn't completely set in stone. We'll see.

It seems Realme started to region lock Indian devices, just like Chinese.

One confirmed model is Realme 12 Pro+. Big chance it'll also affect all OPLUS (Oppo, OnePlus, Realme) devices, so whenever you plan to move out of India and pop another country's SIM, check *#*#3932433284#*#* to avoid an ugly surprise. A device free of region lock should either have an output exactly like in the image, or the value of state should be 2 (factory locked, but unlocked afterwards). Everything else means it's quite certainly region locked and few reboots with a foreign SIM inside will block your calls in all apps, as long as you're running unaltered stock ROM.

I'm gonna disable 😐 if I see it under presumably (if the responding person understood the question correctly) good news again 😩

Meanwhile Xiaomi:
https://fixupx.com/kacskrz/status/1814561811951210963

They're really trying to mess with every distribution where their pricing is sane...

For a comparison, this is Mi 13, using IMX800 in the expected way

https://zentalk.asus.com/t5/zenfone-9/asus-executive-rma-blackmails-me-for-200-to-keep-bootloader/td-p/438996

Asus supposedly started talking of paid bootloader unlock.

Currently, there's an attestation keybox that gets shared around since a week. It's something that makes me not understand Google. If passing MEETS_STRONG_INTEGRITY were meant to really stand for it, the logs from abnormal devices should easily suffice to spot that this keybox had been leaked and revoke it.

So if Google already knows, why not downgrade that device to MEETS_DEVICE_INTEGRITY alone? There's no way to be sure that the keybox isn't being "abused" in an automated process to cause a loss for gullible companies that trust a client device too much just because of strong integrity response from PIA, until the damage is done.

So assuming they know it leaked just like they should, they're either waiting for the OEM to fix the situation by remote provisioning a new keybox or they'll keep it unrevoked indefinitely. Why?

If the keybox comes from a major OEM and is used on a major number of devices, then the fallout from downgrade to MEETS_DEVICE_INTEGRITY would be too high, causing a PR failure for PIA usage due to mad end users who'd lose access to apps, then stress the app devs enough to discard strong integrity requirement.
Such a result would be more likely than resignation from enforcing strong integrity by app owners due to its insecurity alone.

Imo, it looks like Google wants to wait through this for few years until they switch to passing strong integrity only on devices with KeyMint remote key provisioning. And then hope nothing major gets leaked or exploited ever again... 🥱

The lesson for app owners is the same since decades: work on your server side, the client can't ever be trusted. The only thing the client side "trusted computing" tends to reliably achieve is vendor consolidation.

Turns out that for Motorola, your device may be too old for bootloader unlock. The phone in question is first gen Moto G (dual SIM, XT1033) from Brazilian distribution.

It supposedly even applies to Moto G5, codename cedric.

https://forums.lenovo.com/topic/findpost/1734/5234690/6297769

Yet another example, Moto Z2 Force, still officially supported by Lineage. (!)

The bottom of forum page adds to the irony.

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/MOTOROLA-Android-Developer-Community/Can-t-generate-Unique-Unlock-Key-Moto-Z2-Force/m-p/5232069

I ain't reading that, it's GizChina in 2024. But...

But since I have the means to answer the headline question myself, which is How to take good photos with phone?, let me tell you of something universal, from the point of a person who had relatively more technical experience than the artistic one and who in turn had an opportunity to learn of the artistic aspect from the opposite direction. The targeted reader for the following 10-part guide is a nerd who never digged into cameras, and I know plenty. :)

Let's start from the obvious...