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...

1. Rule of thirds.
"Rules" in photography should never limit you. If something tells you that you should break them, go ahead, it might be for the better. But, generally speaking, yes, there is a merit to that one. If you think that the framing of your photos looks boring, rule of thirds may easily happen to fix it.

2. Keeping your worse angles a secret.
People always want to see something new and their time is limited. If you want them to be impressed, don't bore them by forcing them to pick one photo from the burst. It's your own job. Many of the one of a kind photos were selected between a few, taken moments before or after. A whole burst won't be the magazine cover.

3. RAW format.
As long as you have enough storage, you get to revisit the tuning that you've done long time ago. If you don't, you're still getting an option to basically take a photo the second time, and not just that. With proper embedded calibration in DNG, it's easy to obtain an obviously cleaner output than OEM defaults.

4. ETTR, aka exposure to the right.
Just like "unused RAM is wasted RAM", unused highlights are a waste of sensor's ADC. The darker your single frame capture, the more it gets buried in noise, which in default mode of a phone CMOS sensor is concentrated in the bottom of dynamic range. The difference made by ETTR can be as major as jumping 5 years in sensor technology. If you ran out of exposure time, then increase your ISO, to the level just before you hit highlight clipping. In the end, you import a raw and move the expo down to get drastically less noise.

5. Hardware choice.
You probably already have the phone that you wanted to buy, but if you don't and want to prioritize camera this time, then be aware that taking an interesting shot with high quality telephoto lets you easily declutter everything except the subject in question, often matching or exceeding your imagination of the scene. On the other hand, a high Bayer resolution, whether on actual Bayer or after binning, will let you minimize color artifacts and moire on granular details. But don't be misled by the full resolution of multiplied color filter arrays like Quad Bayer, Nona Bayer and anything further – a single frame from 200 MP 4x4 CFA won't look as good as the same from 108 MP 2x2 CFA sensor.