A question regarding current XTEINK attempts to "lock" firmware.
I am one of the lucky ones to have bought my X4 before the recent changes but now I am a bit hesitant to recommend it to my friends or buy another one as a backup. Am I right in understanding that some new X4/X3 devices have USB firmware flash disabled at a hardware level (not possible without disassembly which could be very risky considering how fragile the screen is)? I also understand that there is a group of users downplaying the significance as it is (currently) possible/easy to hijack the official OTA update to install a custom firmware. My worry (as someone who has been programming ESP8266/ESP32 uC for personal projects for years) is that it is all fine and good right up to the point where you make a big enough mistake while messing and testing your custom firmware that you no longer have a functional OTA update path. Am I right that if that happens, the new devices are basically bricked? For my ESP32 projects, as a convenience, I always have OTA flash enabled and usually use it for firmware upload but I can't even count how many times have I introduced a bug that rendered my ESP unresponsive and I had to flash the corrected version through USB.
So... am I right that the current version of 'locked' devices are still mostly usable for normal users only wanting to occasionally flash an already tested community firmware but that those same locked devices are next to useless for the actual developers / tinkerers?