I've bought a Xiaomi phone (Redmi Note 7) that was always a bit annoying (ads, spyware, random installs), until I finally managed to unlock the bootloader and install a pretty clean ROM.
So naturally, when that device had an defective battery, I sent it to the repair shop while buying myself a nicer, more modern Xiaomi Phone, the Redmi note 12 Pro. It even had NFC.
I thought I would just unlock it as the previous one, flash a usable ROM and be happy. The unlock process didn't really work, I though it was because the phone was brand new, so I tried to wait a few month. My old phone was working fine anyway, and sikly smooth despite being a budget phone from a few years back. It's funny how little processing power you need to run clean software.
When developing Breakout 71, I made sure to try the game on as many devices as possible, so I got that note 12 out of the box, and it's indeed a really nice phone and very capable. Sadly, when trying to unlock it again, i've been confronted to all the same dark patterns you'd expect from a company that makes ad supported cheap devices : they don't want you to clean the phone.
You first need to figure out the steps, because nothing is explained. All software (windows unlock tool, mi community app) is out of date and needs to be pulled from unknown sources.
You need to create a xiaomi account, wait 30 days, sign up for "mi comunity", configure your account to "global", click a button to "unlock your booloader" in their forum app (wtf) and then be told, every day, that the "quota" of people that got their request accepted has been reached. The company literaly pits its clients against each other for the privilege of truely owning what they bought.
It's nasty. Chinese users are even forced to "level up" their account by participating in the forums before they can ask to unlock their phones.
Next time, i'll just buy something useable from the start. Phones are so good those days, you don't need to spend more than 200€ to get a solid machine, I spent 400€ on that junk note 12 and i'll not do that mistake twice.
Keep your 120FPS advertising hell xiaomi, i'd rather use a phone that I truely own.