if you are looking for privacy any phone will do as long as you can get something like lineageos in it. get one with good support for roms, stock roms are all similarly bad.

depending on the extent of your reliance on google and which apps you use, you might want to look into microG.

as others mentioned here the baseband processor and some other bits are black boxes, even if it isnt backdoored on purpose they are known to be exploitable by law enforcement, so be wary of that.

this applies to pretty much any phone, regardless of country. my chinese phone works well, and is pretty good for the price.

I have recently unlocked the bootloader of one xiaomi phone and it was kinda annoying imo, you basically have to wait (7 days I think, or more) when using the official unlocker of the xiaomi website for them to unlock the bootloader (without it you can’t degoogle the phone).

There is a lot more telemetry then usual, its China + google that are collecting all your data instead of just google if it was a pixel phone for example. The good side is that there is support for custom roms like lineageOS and its derivatives but I would much rather pick a pixel and put grapheneOS in it if the price wasnt a issue or if you could grab one second-handed.

Besides that, I guess if I was buying regardless I would try unlock the bootloader and install the a custom rom like lineageOS as fast as possible.

check LineageOS and eOS is the phone is supported and flash that or another ROM that you find.

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The main criterion to evaluate a phone should be how easy it is to install your own recovery and system. Pretty much all vendor-provided distributions from any major vendor (regardless of which country) are going to make decisions in the interests of the manufacturer (including violating privacy, making battery management decisions that are more about planned obsolescence than battery life, not letting the owner have root access to install a real firewall, etc…).

Xiaomi is perhaps the most often recognised Chinese vendor as being custom system compatible - at least they have an official path to root - but the official path to rooting your own hardware after you have purchased it is rather dystopian. It involves download a Windows-only tool (or a reverse-engineered third party tool) that talks to their servers, creating an account with them and handing over lots of PII. Then you have to “Apply” to them to unlock your own bootloader, and give a reason. Then they make you wait a variable amount of time (which is sometimes measured in weeks) between when the software first tried to unlock the phone, and when their system will allow you to unlock the bootloader. They will not reduce the wait time if you contact their support and beg nicely for them to graciously let you restore your system onto a new phone that you bought with your own money from them, replacing another identical model that broke. Eventually, after making you wait, when you try again after the minimum time, their system generates a certificate, signed by them, that will allow your phone to transition to ‘unlocked bootloader’ mode, and let you flash what you like.

As such, I’d not really recommend the Chinese vendors unless you find one that doesn’t make you jump through such ridiculous hoops. While I never recommend giving Google any of your PII, if you just want a phone to install your own system on, I’d recommend Google over Xiaomi etc… if within budget; they at least recognise that if you buy it off them, you should have the right to install privacy respecting stuff immediately (they do make you click past a warning that the bootloader is unlocked on every boot, but that is pretty minor and is two quick button clicks you anticipate in advance per boot).

One pro tip: Once you have flashed a custom system, get something like F-Droid installed as your app store, and install a good firewall from it (AFWall+ or similar; many apps you might install are not privacy respecting, and a firewall helps), and also battery management software (ACCA is good; manufacturers optimise for day-1 marketable battery capacity even if it will trash the battery within a couple of years that could otherwise last a decade; only using 5% - 85% of the manufacturer battery capacity, i.e. turning off charging automatically at 85% and shutting down if you hit 5% instead of 0%, will make your battery last many times longer for most of the battery life, and modern LiPo batteries last surprisingly well per charge to 85% if you aren’t running lots of software that is wasting battery on anti-features).

TL;DR: Pretty bad. I definitely wouldn’t buy one. I wouldn’t mess around with Custom ROMs as most phones don’t allow you to relock the bootloader, which decreases security significantly. A Pixel with GrapheneOS is the best option. Pixel phones have great hardware security and full supported for Android Verified Boot, even with a custom OS. Just make sure to get a 6th Generation or newer, as the older models don’t get security updates anymore. The Pixel 6a is perfect, you can find it for around $150 used and it gets security updates until 2027.

Absolutely LOVE my Xiaomi 13 Ultra w/ xiaomi.eu ROM. Best phone I’ve had since my Nexus 5, easy.

Pretty good once you get a custom rom on it.

Xiaomi phones usually get their source code published. From there, you may want to choose a Qualcomm device, for some reason developers prefer these to build device trees for custom ROMs. If you don’t mind having an older phone, you may want to check the list of officially supported phones for reputed custom ROMs like Lineage OS or Pixel Experience and buy one of those. I’m guessing that phones in China are cheap and options are numerous.

I’ve had a Huawei for years and I love it. The only telemetry I’ve noticed is from Google services and other third party apps I’ve installed. I use a firewall to block network access to apps that don’t need it.

Look at taobao, look for Google pixel phones. They’re amazingly available, and slightly cheaper than outside of China. I think the discount is reflective of what a pain in the ass it is to use a Google phone in China.

For all the people saying they would never buy a phone from China, you realize most phones are built in China already right?

I had a Xiaomi as my previous phone, a POCO F2 Pro. I ran it with the stock firmware after disabling all possible tracking options in settings, and after debloating with a script easily found on xda. As much as I would have loved to install a custom ROM and root it, I didn’t want to forgo Google Pay and access to banking apps.

It was quite good and very powerful for the price. Bested flagship devices from Samsung and others when it was new and for up to a year after that. Dare I say, it was one of the best phones I ever owned.

Then after 2 years it stopped charging. I had to crack it open and replug a connector between the mainboard and the USB-C port. Worked flawlessly after that.

I switched to a Pixel 7 since. A friend is still using the Xiaomi and loves it.

I would consider them but the Pixels are very good for the price as well.

I would worry more about the rights of the workers, in tech, companies uses a lot of slavery work and get resources from places in a bad way, forcing more slavery in very bad conditions which is basically stealing resources from other countries. If you want something ethic, you could go to Fairphone which is more expensive than others for less capacity/power, but it is ethical.

Apart from that, any android have the ability to install a new ROM, just search for the support for it, as more support it has less difficult it will be to install custom and clean ROM, so doesn’t really matter where it comes from. Just check the support for custom ROMs and if you are really worried about equality go to Fairphone.

I’ve been buying OnePlus for years and they’re as good as anything, even factory. Relatively easy to install custom firmware on.

I’m not an expert but my instinct says you should never take any digital device over the chinese border. No matter in which direction.

Besides the privacy concerns that have already been addressed, you probably need to be able to repair the phone yourself when it breaks. No after sale service when you take that phone back home. So that means you need to be able to buy parts from AliExpress or whatever.