It seems that these Chinese companies are throwing out regular mobile phone hardware updates, almost every month.
The main thing that should matter to buyers is: how short a time are these phones going to see software updates for? You need firmware updates for the phone itself and then android security updates. XiaoMi and Oppo do NOT excel in this area.
Another thing of importance is to consider what Chinafication is happening when you use the phone. I have enabled Wireshark on the WiFi network to determine what is happening with my XiaoMi Mi 8 and 9 and can see a lot of traffic to Chinese IP addresses. Double digit megabytes per day. Normal consumers should care about this, it's really important! The truth is that we just don't know what personal information is being sent to Chinese companies, with close links to the CCP government.
As somebody who works in Security I have to use an iPhone. Why? The CVEs are quickly eradicated and they have less of a hardware line up to consider. I would actually prefer to use android, LineageOS, GrapheneOS or /E/ (stupid name, please change it Duval) but unfortunately for a normal user to understand the hardware lifecycle and the software security lifecycle is almost impossible. It differs between manufacturers and brands, and that's before we even get to how Google seem to infiltrate every aspect of the android experience to take data without permission and impose difficulty ceasing this action. Every time you use assisted GPS (A-GPS) your location and IP address are sent to Google servers. When I contrast this, in corporate analysis, with Apple, we can easily opt-out as a corporate entity from all of Apple's tracking and use of this tracking to sell the data to third parties. We can't do this with google, as google don't even allow us to opt-out.
I don't trust Google, but I sure as hell true anonymous Chinese IP addresses less. They could be doing the same thing, but the traffic is encrypted and I couldn't determine what was being sent daily to these Chinese IP addresses.
But feel free to go and waste £750 on a 'flagship' Chinese phone that will have software issues within the year, lack of Security updates too, and likely hardware issues within 2 years. Then you'll go and stupidly buy another one within two years anyway! You pay a lot for a flagship phone and then your data is also sold off to google. Why do this when you can pay a lot for a flagship phone and not have your data monetised by using Apple phones? I'm no fanboi, just a Security expert whose focus is on Security solely, so please consider that before flaming.
Insane.
Also insane that no other western manufacturers offer an alternative to good Security than Apple! Come on competition, do your thing!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
