I will share my experiences with the Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 Pro. When using the YouTube app over Wi-Fi or LTE, after watching a certain number of videos for a certain amount of time, the app acts as if the internet connection has been lost. This occurs even when the internet is working perfectly fine and the app says that I am not connected to the internet. Occasionally, the app crashes and enters a crash loop. Even after forcing it to stop in Settings, it crashes again when reopened.

This happens frequently. It’s not something that has happened to me just once. I have YouTube Premium, so I’m paying for the service. Despite that, it still happens. I don’t think this is an internet issue or a simple glitch. I previously tried clearing all data and cache from the settings to fix the problem. Nothing changed.

To investigate the issue further, I closed the video when the error occurred and tried to reopen it, but that did not resolve the problem. The only way to resolve the offline error is to force-close the YouTube app and reopen it. To determine whether I was truly offline at that moment, I minimized the app and accessed the internet; it functioned properly. Then, while the original YouTube app was showing errors, I opened the NewPipe community YouTube project and videos opened seamlessly in 1080p using the open-source NewPipe program. Although NewPipe played videos in the background without issue, when I returned to YouTube and tried to refresh the page, nothing changed. The app still thought I was offline.

I think the reason for this might be hidden in the app’s source code. It’s as if there’s a code that secretly counts, adds a random factor, and triggers at a certain point. This code cuts off the internet connection, but only for the YouTube app. The crashes may have been caused by either sudden connection drops or a rare bug in the YouTube code.

I don’t think YouTube is using a system-wide or hardware-level spy chip because they aren’t employing tactics like system-wide IP blocking or altering how the entire system functions. The issue only affects YouTube temporarily and resolves itself after restarting the app. Such code can be analyzed for its existence. However, this code may be located at the server level. The server detects that the device is a Xiaomi and cuts off communication after a certain number of video requests.

From my experience, it seems like Google is doing something similar to Xiaomi as it did with Huawei. In the competition between the U.S. and China, one of the U.S.’s biggest weapons is Google Services (GMS) and Google itself: These include YouTube, Google Meets, Gemini Assistant, and, most importantly, the Google Play Store. These are the heart of Android. Even crazier, the company that licenses Android is Google. However, Google prefers to keep Google services and the Android operating system open to the public for several reasons:

  1. Obtaining More User Data: Google offers Android and many of its services for free primarily to obtain more user data. Google’s primary source of income is advertising, and ad effectiveness is directly related to the quality and quantity of user data collected. This data can also be used to develop artificial intelligence.

  2. Maximizing Advertising Revenue Google’s core business is advertising. The more people use Android devices and Google services, such as Google Maps, Gmail, YouTube, and Google Search, the more advertising revenue Google generates. Through these services, Google collects valuable data about user behavior and interests (in compliance with privacy policies, of course). This data enables ads to be more personalized and effective for users. More users means more data, which means more targeted ads and more ad revenue. This is where Google’s main revenue stream lies.

  3. Preventing the Emergence of Competitors and Encouraging Innovation Android’s free availability makes it an attractive option for manufacturers, who are aware of the high costs and difficulties involved in developing a new mobile operating system from scratch. This reduces the likelihood of rival operating systems emerging while encouraging Google to innovate and continuously improve the system.

So, while you simplify your life by using Google’s free services, the company gains access to data and a wide audience, the foundation of its business model. It’s a win-win situation for both parties. However, sometimes things reach a point where a Chinese competitor, for example, becomes very powerful. In this case, the data and revenue that can be obtained from Google services may have to be sacrificed. Just as with Huawei, it seems that something is being done for Xiaomi as well. They aren’t giving up revenue and data completely because that was the biggest trump card played against Huawei, resulting in a loss. However, Huawei has also suffered a loss. Xiaomi users are also being made frustrated and annoyed.

The goal is to enable Xiaomi users to access Google services while covertly causing them to malfunction intermittently under specific conditions. These malfunctions can be randomized and hidden so well that they can be carried out at the server level.

So, why do I believe this and think that the phone I tried is not faulty? Because NewPipe works very well, and the problem only occurs under similar conditions. There is no reason for it to happen. However, a false warning about losing an internet connection appears. Even switching to LTE does not solve the problem when this warning appears. I have used Samsung phones for years and have never experienced this issue before. I am experiencing it for the first time with Xiaomi. This situation may contribute to the perception that devices made by Chinese companies are unreliable and have a high margin of error.

The problem isn’t actually limited to YouTube. The Gemini app also starts lagging when conversations get long. If I try to leave the app and come back during a long conversation, it can take 5-10 seconds for the app to respond. It’s hard to believe that Google couldn’t optimize a simple, AI chat app. All they needed to do was render chat bubbles in a simple interface. As someone who knows programming, I know that such a text-based app could be designed to require very little processing power. Additionally, the Redmi Note 13 Pro has plenty of processing power! It has a MediaTek Helio G99 (MT6789/MT8781) system on a chip (SoC). This SoC has two 2.2 GHz ARM Cortex-A76 cores and six 2.0 GHz ARM Cortex-A55 cores. Now, let’s compare it to a Samsung phone. The Samsung A55 features an Exynos 1480 SoC. This SoC includes two 2.8 GHz ARM Cortex-A78 cores and four 2.1 GHz ARM Cortex-A55 cores. The Samsung S23’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 has 1 3.2 GHz Cortex-X3, 2 2.8 GHz Cortex-A715, 2 2.8 GHz Cortex-A710, and 3 2.0 GHz Cortex-A510 cores.

Of course, premium phones tend to have more powerful processors, but the comparison shows that the system on a chip (SoC) chosen by Xiaomi for the Redmi Note 13 Pro is average. The Gemini app should run smoothly! I suspect this is a deliberate decision rather than an optimization issue. Still, it doesn’t make much sense to me. Google wants to collect data from Gemini conversations, but not everyone uses Gemini app as frequently compared to YouTube. Perhaps it’s just real lag caused by Google designing a simple app in a complex way.

In short, I think Chinese device manufacturers are being targeted through Google. Google services are important to most users, so banning them could result in Google and Chinese manufacturers losing revenue. It could even lead to their collapse. I wonder if the sabotage of Google services that I’ve experienced is also present in other Chinese manufacturers’ devices. I’d like to test YouTube on Huawei devices. However, my experience is currently limited to a Xiaomi phone.

After all, Google could shut down or degrade its services for a particular manufacturer at any time. I don’t believe there are any legal consequences for doing so. Think of it as owning a product and prohibiting others from using it. While this may be annoying, especially when it comes to a platform like YouTube that is full of information people have accumulated and that belongs to humanity, it should not create any legal problems.

Ideally, people would be able to store and share their information neutrally. However, technological advancements have led to the proliferation of videos on YouTube. Hopefully, Google, YouTube’s owner, will take good care of this data and make it accessible.