I've been looking at phones to replace my Pixel 4a as the battery goes and it becomes increasingly silly to get it replaced instead of getting something new. I don't like huge phones, which i consider to be anything over ~6.2". Everything under that is either:
- A Google Pixel with poor efficiency, thermals, and call reliability
- A Samsung Galaxy S with a high price, locked bootloader, dodgy privacy, and bloatware
- A miscellaneous brand with abysmal software support lifespan, variable bootloader lock status, and little to no custom rom support
the ASUS Zenfone 10 would have been honestly perfect for me - sub-6" screen, headphone jack, good performance. But they just haaad to remove bootloader unlocking despite promises to the contrary so now you have to settle for one more OS update and three more years of security updates for something that costs $600+. blurgh.
I would suggest avoiding Xiaomi anyway. I've got a Mi 10t Lite 5g, and it's come to the end of the update cycle. I wanted to unlock the bootloader and flash a new ROM, but they try to force ads on you and take your data as much as they can.
It has a fair amount of ads by default, which you can disable, but you have to set up a Mi account to unlock the bootloader. Part of setting up the account is having to accept tracking cookies through their website, as well as sync your data to their servers from your phone. If you don't do these, you can't unlock the bootloader.
It just feels a bit scummy, and I don't trust them to delete my data when I'm done.