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> no name brands, often phones <$200

there are plenty of perfectly respectable phones available for less than 200 USD. At least they are in Norway, for instance, Moto, Nokia, Xiaomi. My Moto G30 (>6 inch display, 128 GB storage, 64 MP main camera) from Lenovo was only 120 USD a couple of years ago.

Can't imagine why anyone would buy a no name mobile at the same price.

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Xiaomi have great hardware, but I can't trust their software one bit :(

If I need an inexpensive phone, I usually buy a refurbished or used phone from a good brand, like Sony or Samsung or Google.

Xiaomi makes it very easy to unlock the bootloader and install a custom ROM. Of course you should trust the ROM makers and learning how to flash every device takes a little bit of time but I think is worth it.

Do they still require you to make an account with them and wait a few weeks, or am I thinking of a different manufacturer?

Actually thats a protection. Many frauds were found to custom unlock the phone and sell those phone with malware, so they decided to make unlocking process hard. Phone are unlocked by bad people, too, but I agree thats quite annoying.

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