It’s 2021, is it still easy to love an Android phone?

Ever since Xiaohei used an Android phone for the first time, there have been countless problems plaguing Xiaohei: Why does the phone always freeze when I use it casually? Why does the app automatically start downloading without knowing where I clicked? Why is the native system so difficult to use, and I don’t know what will happen after I flash the flash package?

It was not until later that Xiaohei installed MIUI, which had just been launched at the time, that the "troublesome work" on Android phones came to an end.

However, a piece of news that Xiao Hei read recently reminded Xiao Hei again of the days when he was either flashing his phone or downloading a flash package.

What is the unknown reason why the domestic Android UI "renamed" ADUI?

In fact, the domestic Android UI itself is indeed a good thing. When native Android did not have convenient or even basic functions such as mobile phone manager and express delivery check, third-party Android UI had already added these functions to mobile phones.

It can be said that these third-party UIs are much better than native Android in terms of localization. Even today, there are many functions that native Android has not added.

Smart Assistant in MIUI 12.5

However, the openness of Android system can be said to be a double-edged sword: it not only allows us to use better-used third-party UI, It allows us to play around as much as we want, and also allows application developers to lower the threshold for doing tricks in various places.

On station B, Xiaohei found the video mentioned above. After watching it, his feeling was: Even though Xiaohei has already defaulted to the domestic UI with ads, this video from the UP owner The system ads that appear on Meizu phones are still outrageous.

Screenshots of advertisements in Bilibili videos

In the video, the UP owner tried many apps that come with Meizu phones, and almost without exception, these apps will be available on Ads pop up on startup or shutdown. It’s not just pop-up ads. What’s more, some of these ads are even disguised as system notifications.

Advertisements disguised as system upgrade reminders

Although Xiao Hei has even "accepted" the fact that the domestic Android UI has ads, seeing such ads, Xiao Hei My heart was still filled with shock.

Moreover, in addition to being disguised as "system upgrades," the advertisements in the video can be said to be "full of tricks." In the comments section, some users pointed this out.

Although with the development of the Internet, more and more young people have begun to learn "skills" and mastered the skills of avoiding advertisements (however I think this skill is very sad), but in the While we are mastering skills, the forms of advertising are also developing rapidly, not to mention that among China's Internet users, many are elderly people who are slow to learn new things.

According to data released by Tencent Yingyingbao in 2018, as of the end of 2017, the number of elderly Internet users in China accounted for 1/5 of the elderly population. With the continuous development of the mobile phone industry, this number should still increase a lot by now. For this group of people, learning how to deal with the constant “innovation” of mobile phone advertising will be a helpless and meaningless project.

It is this group of people who are most likely to be deceived and deceived by advertisements.

How many steps does it take to turn off system advertising on MIUI?

There is a question asking, "How many steps does it take to put an elephant into the refrigerator?"

The answer is very simple, open the refrigerator door, put in the elephant, Close the refrigerator door.

However, if you want to ask "How many steps do you need to turn off system ads on Xiaomi mobile phones?", the answer to this question is difficult to say, because this question is like trying to install several elephants. Enter several refrigerators.

So, Xiaohei decided to summarize the online tutorials on "turning off ads on Xiaomi phones", and combined with his own experience in daily use, to calculate how many steps it takes to turn off ads on Xiaomi phones.

The advertisements in Xiaomi mobile phones are very scattered

Because the advertisements in Xiaomi mobile phones are very scattered, we cannot simply turn them off directly through one setting, but need to turn them off separately.

The first thing to turn off is the "Personalized Ad Recommendation" in the system's advertising service. The location of this setting is in "Password and Security/System Security/Advertising Services".

Of course, turning it off does not directly turn off the ads, it just prevents the system from obtaining our usage preferences through our daily use. In fact, this is also explained in the relevant settings.

The second item to turn off is system advertising. According to the system description, turning off this feature can turn off ads in Xiaomi system tools.

We can also check which applications the system tools here refer to by clicking on the introduction.

But for Xiao Hei, whether this option is turned off or not does not seem to be that important. Because there may be much fewer ads after it is turned off, but other content push is not less at all.

For example, in the picture above, the video weather forecast and today's information in the red box will still appear after closing the system tool advertisement.

In addition, the same system-level ads, ad recommendations in the app store and application folders cannot be turned off by turning off system tool ads. These ads even have to be turned off in three different places. The first is ad recommendations in the app store.

Ad recommendations in the App Store are easiest to turn off, but in two different places. After clicking the settings button in "My", we need to turn off the two push functions in "Notification Settings" and "Recommendations" respectively.

There are two advertisements in the app store

The other two closing methods are a bit troublesome to find. After we open an application folder at random, the application recommendations at the bottom like the one in the first picture will appear. When I saw it for the first time, Xiao Hei searched for a long time and couldn't find a way to close it. Mainly because its close button is designed to be relatively hidden. We need to click on the folder name first. In the state of editing the folder name, You can see the close button.

The close button of the advertisement on the application installation interface is designed to be more hidden: under normal circumstances, we can't find any way to close it. Only when installing a third-party application, can we click on it in the upper left corner Settings, see the presence of the close button.

Fortunately, this advertisement is not in a very conspicuous place and is not very harmful, so the "hidden design" of this button does not seem to be too annoying.

Installation page advertisements can only be turned off on the installation page

All of the above can be regarded as system-level advertising push. Xiaohei roughly counted them, and one *** needs them Go to five different settings pages to set up. And that should be tiresome enough.

This is not over yet. In addition to these system advertisements, we also have a lot of push content in different system applications that need to be turned off. The most important one and the most annoying to Xiaohei is the push content in the Mobile Butler application. content.

In the built-in mobile phone manager of Xiaomi mobile phones, we still need to turn off push content in three different places.

At the bottom of the overall settings of Mobile Manager, we can see the "Content Recommendation Settings", please turn it off quickly.

There are also similar recommended services in the two functional modules of "Trash Cleaning" and "App Management" of Mobile Butler.

The location in the red box also has recommended services

Same operation as above, close them all.

On the left are the junk cleaning settings, and on the right are the application management settings.

In addition, Xiaohei recommends that most users can turn off "Allow WAP" in the "Settings/Advanced Settings" of the SMS app. push".

The so-called "WAP push" refers to the push technology that actively sends information to the client through the server. The advantage of this push technology is that it can push information to users' mobile phones in a more timely manner, so it has been widely used in previous fields such as text message news.

However, if you turn on receiving WAP push notifications, it may be used by criminals to push various spam text messages to your mobile phone.

WAP push content received by users on Tieba

In addition to these system-level push functions, different system tool applications and information applications also have their own Content push switch.

Xiao Hei roughly remembered that in built-in applications such as calendar, weather, search tools, browsers, music, reading, Xiaomi Video, etc., you need to turn off content push through settings. Among them, calendar, weather, search tools and browsers can be regarded as commonly used applications by most people.

Weather, search tools and push switches in browsers

If we do not count the highly replaceable built-in applications such as music, video and reading, we will also have to use them in ten Setting up two different pages to turn off most advertisements and content recommendations is really troublesome to do such meaningless operations in order to make good use of your phone.

Have these problems of automatic downloading and advertising been alleviated?

Xiaohei used Xiaomi mobile phones as an example above. This does not mean that other domestic manufacturers do not have this problem. As a Bilibili user said, this is a problem for the entire domestic ecology.

This is why Xiao Hei can only accept this fact helplessly after a long period of "resistance".

However, Xiaohei is still curious. Have the problems of difficulty closing ads and automatically downloading apps that were common on Android phones been alleviated now?

Regarding this issue, Xiaohei tested the open-screen advertisements of many common applications and concluded that at least in the applications of major manufacturers, it is difficult for us to see this problem.

It is more convenient to turn off ads for big-maker apps

Of course, sometimes it is difficult to turn off ads, but according to Xiaohei’s judgment, this is more due to the curved screen. The reason for poor adaptation to the application has little to do with the application itself.

Curved screens will have a greater impact on edge touch accuracy

In addition to the difficulty of turning off ads, automatic application downloading is also a long-standing criticism of Android phones, Xiaohei This issue was also tested.

It can be seen that after Xiao Hei casually touched the opening screen advertisement, the words "Downloading started" appeared at the bottom of the screen, and he quickly jumped to the installation interface.

Therefore, the problem of automatically starting downloads is still one of the headaches for Android phone users. It's okay if you download a normal application, but if some people use their brains and implant some weird things, who will be responsible for the damage caused?

Therefore, we can answer the question raised in the title: Even though it is already the beginning of 2021, it is still not easy to truly fall in love with the domestic system UI.

In fact, everyone knows very well: when a user opens a new mobile phone, they must want a smoother and more comfortable experience. However, the current status of domestic mobile phone system UI makes it difficult for us to feel this without effort.

Even though major mobile phone manufacturers often provide buttons to turn off advertising push, why not just do it in one step and directly deny advertising access to the system like iOS and native Android?