Not looking for me personally, so leaving the specs/features open, and generally interested in what people might recommend.
Imo there’s almost always some surprising budget phones floating around to learn about. Only condition I might add is that preferably they’re from 2022-2023, and if not, mention their release year to help know its version/update situation.
Just be aware with Xiaomi phones that you might be restricted for certain things.
My memory’s not great, so I can’t remember if it was unlocking the bootloader or root, but Xiaomi locked it behind an account. You can’t unlock without setting up a Xiaomi account that includes, from memory, your email address, phone number, and date of birth.
I’ve read that newer phones are going to be even more locked down, but I don’t know if there are going to be workarounds.
It’s unfortunate yeah. A lot of data goes to Xiaomi instead of Samsung, Google and Apple. Rooting is more of a hassle than on other phones but definitely possible.
That’s still a trade off I’m willing to make to get a mid-range phone for half price of a comparable Samsung.
I’ve found the article I mentioned earlier. It’s the bootloader that currently needs a Xiaomi account to unlock.
https://xiaomiui.net/how-to-unlock-xiaomi-bootloader-and-install-custom-rom-7098/
I’m sure that I’ve read that they are going to restrict rooting and bootloader unlocking though, probably on here somewhere. I just can’t find the post.
Your memory really is not great, and you can use throwaway emails to deal with registering/receiving codes from them.