Sales already over, price of course up back....

to be honest, at price point below 500
please do not expect decent camera , in day light should be ok

Also, Redmi 9T is best bang for buck at below 500 (wait sales , it will promo at 399 then + voucher will get below 400)
I purchased redmi 9T before for my uncle, just some note to you (same as i write previously)
- there is AD at system level (u can disable but some core app will auto re-enable every 30day)
- risk of brick - this is hardware issue (i heard newer batch unit solved, finger cross u dun get old unit dated before maybe jul~aug ?)

For samsung;
> avoid their budget line at all cost
> their A series (5x) and above and flagship is ok

For other brand, actually pricing below 500 you don't get good all rounder.
Mostly come with 8x A55 and eMMC 5.1 storage

Possible try find with UFS 2.0 / 2.1 storage , but for this price abit hard except redmi or poco series 
If for elderly light use , i think ok
If you wan use as main phone , can try top up to 600 ~ 7xx aim for POCO X3 or M4 PRO during sales

xmax sale if they reach on time, taobao already got.
Too much thing to answer, you handle la.

For best night shot, only flagship phone without using MTK, many brand not having optimized ISP algorithm for taking photo with MTK, even vivo or oppo(I forgot which one ) is much better than XiaoMi in daylight only, but still worse than Qualcomm ISP.

So yes, a normal phone with Qualcomm should be good enough already, 66x is famous chip, so they already have good optimized ISP algorithm for 2 years.

It might change in the future la.
With the best Dimensity 9000 beat Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 gen 1, many phone brand start optimizing MTK for their flagship phone now, and it will come next year.
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Ri4y1d7qb
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV183411x7yi

PS: The problem for MTK is they sell services as DLC, like new driver and kernel support for new Android need pay for another money, while Qualcomm give you cheaper.
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Also doing research on battery replacement, found out most seller brand is fake 50% capacity only, while easy to kembung lol, at least found 1 HK brand is real one, but RM 50+ la.
So I still better replace after drop below 3000mah(60% of capacity).