[Vivo X90 Pro Plus] extremecarver:
That's simply not the case. So far phones produced in China for global market spy much less than phones produced for China. Because even Iphone produced for China or Samsung produced for China will have to comply with the Chinese government orders on receiving the content of all messages, a list of all phone calls and more data (maybe even all call content).

There is a difference between China OS phone and Chinese global phone - and most people do NOT know this.

And then - as long as there is no sticky for China OS phones listing exactly what google services are unreliable (like google wallet) and which don't work (e.g. Android Auto, google Assistant, Google Backup, Google Location History) or restrictions like very hard to exchange system launcher - and if you do you receive a notice that you have to click away (but not click on it) every reboot or every few days - most people simply aren't aware of all the problems.

I haven't seen a single review of the X90 Pro+ listing all the missing google services - on the contrary the say it's easy to install google playstore and everything works (notebookcheck) - showing that they clearly never used the phone as daily driver (but 90% of the readers will not know this!) to XDA review mentioning only Android auto and okay google not working (that way you believe the rest - including conversation with google assistant does work) or Chinahandys.net which goest the furthes but still misses some points - however does explain to remove vivo.pem (single review ever mentioning this) if you want to receive notifications - but still misses out on location history and google backup.

If the reviews all mentioned the above problems, then much less people would buy China OS phones in first place, and then it really would be justified saying don't vent about google stuff not working. But the fact is that the reviews all miss this. Even more they often tell you that you can just flash the global firrmware (in case of Xiaomi) - though with Xiaomi 13 for example this has become super complicated, and very easy to brick your phone while doing so.

That goes so far that Trading Shenzen advertises google wallet working - and I still think it's possible to get it to work so far on every phone - and people just not having the right framework installed - but there is no guarantee whatsoever it will continue to work with Android 14.

Same for updates - all the reviews mention either the global update policy which doesn't apply, or like chinahandys saying no guarentee but 2-3 years of updates including major android versions - which again ist not true - because e.g. Vivo X70 Pro+ never got Android 12, and very likely a single major updgrade - Android 13 - and very very delayed security patches (and as long as you use Android - those patches are essential - they have nothing to do with google itself).

Many people buying the X90 Pro+ come from Huawei P30 Pro or even Mate 20 Pro - those had really good / reliable software with the caveat of course of being stuck with Android 10 due to the Huawei ban. However no single other Chinese brand ever got close to the Huawei software quality...

And no - I wasn't aware of most of those points - before buying - because no damn review mentions them! And I thought chinese phones = China OS chinese phones when it comes to spyware (similar to bloatware ). But this is simply not the case. I didn't know that the China spyware costs a lot of battery life (see identical phones on dxomark or gsmarena battery tests - with the China OS version usually having 7-15% less battery life, espcially standby much shorter!)

And youtube reviews are even worse - they usually mention no single point at all of the above.