Hey. I was just looking for curiosity the official china xiaomi store. And I saw the Redmi Note 13 Pro+, it seems to be a great phone with 12gb of RAM and 512GB of storage, 200MP camera (I know that doesn't determine how good the photos will be) for just 2099 yuans which is approximately 250€, and I was wondering, is it even possible to buy this china only phones for such a great price and import them to europe?
The Redmi Note 13 Pro+ is actually more "westernized" than the rest of the K70 series (the name that it recieves in china) as it even has a western name and I swear I have seen youtube channels who have this phone. (Though if this is doable and someone wants to try, if you look at the K70 Pro you will see an option for 24GB of RAM and 1TB of storage for 4099 yuans which is an amazing price for those specs).
I know aliexpress exists and I was able to find the phone but for prices a bit higher and the best price I was able to find was on alibaba for around 210€, I would consider buying on aliexpress but unless someone convinces me of the contrary I wouldn't buy on Alibaba.
So not only do the backdoors in Huawei's equipment reported on in 2020 allow them to spy on network traffic for China, but the NSA might have implants on Huawei's backend that would allow them to also get a copy of that information. That sounds like all the more reason to avoid Huawei and go the GrapheneOS route. Not sure why you think any of that is contradicting.
My point is, when the NSA and US intelligence had essentially full access to Huawei's infrastructure and private documents, as shown in the leak in 2014, they could not produce the smoking gun that that proves Huawei had allowed the Chinese government any kind of backdoor access, nor did they claim that until 6 years later, and again, without any presentable evidence despite full access to Huawei's internal infrastructure besides "take our word for it", so forgive me for doubting the Trump administration's honesty during the middle of the US-China trade war.
I'm not saying that the backdoor doesn't exist, but I would like to see evidence, logs or leaks that proves unauthorized access, before making any kind of conclusion, otherwise, it is all just conjecture and not "have been caught having them in their devices.”
Otherwise, remember the Bloomberg story on the "spy chip" on the Supermicro motherboard a few years back? To date, nobody has ever produced examples of a Supermicro motherboard with this "spy chip" after years, but Bloomberg has never retracted that story as far as I know.
So erring on the side of caution is wrong? I should go out and buy a $200 phone with the same specs as a $1200 phone and just think I got a great deal? C'mon, bud.