One of the reasons many people prefer stock (or rather near-stock) Android, straight from Google is the fact that some OEMs go over-the-top in customizing their skins. So much so that some don’t really bear any resemblance to the AOSP they are based on, other than the support for Android Apps and Google Services.
Many Chinese OEMs have gotten this bad rap, and some like Xiaomi’s MIUI going as far as showing ads in the settings app. Granted, their reason makes sense….sort of. They show you these ads in a bid to generate some little revenue that goes to offset the price of their devices that is generally lower than the competition.
But ads are still ads; annoying and intrusive. Advertising has a time and a place, and the place is never on the lock screen of a smartphone you paid a lot of money for. And Huawei, in between its current woes, has begun allowing advertisements for Booking.com on the lock screens of several of its phones.
The ads don’t seem to be limited to a certain region or country — they’re appearing on devices in the UK, Netherlands, Ireland, South Africa, Norway, and Germany, at the very least.
However, this can be turned off by turning off the Magazine backgrounds from within the settings app.
UPDATE:
These ads are now gone.
