The Polish neighbor warns against Xiaomi and other Chinese smartphones. "Throw away and don't buy"

A report presented by the Lithuanian Ministry of Defense indicates that Xiaomi Corp phones sold in Europe have a built-in function to detect and censor such phrases as "free Tibet", "Taiwan independence" or "democracy movement". The list contains 449 Chinese expressions and is constantly updated. It can be used by system applications such as a web browser. In Xiaomi Mi 10T 5G phones, this function is disabled by default for the territory of the European Union, but it can be turned on again at any time and it is possible remotely.

From the Lithuanian report, we also learn that Xiaomi phones send encrypted data to servers in Singapore. Huawei P40 5G phones are to work similarly. However, this type of behavior has not been found in any OnePlus products. The Baltic News Service website asked Huawei's Baltic representative for comment and was assured that the Chinese company does not send any user data outside.

It is not the first time Lithuania has taken bold action against China. Last month, the authorities of the Middle Kingdom called on our neighbor to withdraw its ambassador from Beijing and announced the recall of its representative in Vilnius. The reason for the whole incident was the announcement of the opening of a Taiwanese representative office in Lithuania, and specifically calling it the Taiwanese Representative Office. Other similar institutions operating in Europe use the name of the country's capital, i.e. Taipei, so as not to offend the Chinese.

We asked the Xiaomi representative in Poland for a comment on the Lithuanian report. You can find the company's official statement here.

We also encourage you to listen to an episode of the Podcast Technically Rzecz Taking, in which we break down the most interesting topics related to new technologies.