Comment by pjc50
12 hours ago
This has been a problem for a while. It's Akerloff "market for lemons" applied to technology. Sometimes however you gamble and win, discovering that the Chinese device actually is really good for the price. Occasionally even better, when you discover that some anti-feature like DRM is either not implemented or trivially turned off.
It used to be that cheap android junk devices would just give you a root shell with "adb shell" - no need for root exploits or reflashing - while expensive devices would give you a locked down shell.
This is my favorite version of this dynamic, intentionally buying the crap because they cheaped out on the antifeatures.