where’s that RR logo from?

I wouldn’t call it a “scam” just manipulative marketing

the difference?

yes, they do (redmi the same as other xiaomi phones) and that’s an important thing I left out.

I did create an account long ago with an alias email that i’ve used for the unlocking of several phones’ bootloader. it also requires a phone number for “verification” when you start the unlocking process, so for anonimity you’d need an unregistered burner phone number

so it does leave a trace in their books

in case you go for a cheap new phone, around here the best option are some Redmi ones. recently got a Redmi Note 9 and slapped LOS on it for a friend, for about 170€. since none are very recent models, sometimes I had to spend a good time searching for them in shop stocks

there is a fork with proprietary dependencies removed called Signal-FOSS, whose repo you can add to F-Droid if you decide to trust it