if no China brand, then you're basically left with Samsung, Apple, Asus and Nokia.

Android budget until mid range is rubbish in term of performance, especially weak in GPU segment. Iphone is out of your budget range, so forget it, unless you don't mind second hand unit. For android, better stick for flagship snapdragon chipset, Asus ROG Phone 2 only the choices, but need extra RM500 for your current budget, you can get a SD 855+, 6000 mah battery, 8GB RAM and 128 GB ROM. Forget Samsung, Samsung only sell junk Exynos CPU in our market, is pay for a rubbish for expensive price tag.