Xiaomi’s sub-brand Poco or Pocophone had a thrilling start in 2018 when it launched its first phone dubbed Poco F1 as a flagship killer against OnePlus 6. This gave Pocophone the much-needed hype but that only started dying when the company started to simply rebrand its parent company’s phones like the recently launched Poco M2 Pro in India is a rebranded Redmi Note 9 Pro. If that wasn’t enough, reviewers and those who got their hands on Poco M2 Pro devices realized that the phone has a major issue.
I am talking about the issue that has spread like wildfire due to the ongoing political tension between the two neighboring giants India and China. Poco hasn’t kept a tab on the user privacy on its M2 Pro which comes with a tonne of bloatware which is typically difficult to uninstall unless the user knows how to root or remove these apps. Moreover, the phone manages to arrive with a few apps that the Government of India banned earlier last week due to privacy concerns including the likes of Clean Master, TikTok, and others.
One of the things that Poco users have been facing is that even a so-called cleaner app on their phones requests access to files, sensors, and other aspects of the phone. How on Earth would access to “Contacts” aid in the working of a cleaner app. The cherry on the top is that once the access has been granted, it cannot be revoked unless you specifically deny it as with many Android 10 builds. This could potentially cause harm to the user as all the data is believed to be routed to a Chinese server.