[gpm]

Are they? That hasn't been my experience in Canada but maybe pricing is different in India?

Could you point to some specific cheap phones by those companies so I could see if I can find comparable phones by non-Chinese companies?

[kyawzazaw]

extra tariffs on iPhones. Look here: https://www.mi.com/in/

[gpm]

At the top of that page is the Redmi 9a for 6,799. Here is a similar phone from samsung for Rs. 6,499.

https://www.91mobiles.com/samsung-galaxy-m01-core-32gb-price...

[bgee]

That Redmi has 8 cores (cpu released in 2020) compared to the Samsung with 4 cores (released in 2017).

On Antutu benchmark, the Redmi is almost 5x higher [0]. So I don't think they can be considered "similar".

[0]: https://gadgetversus.com/processor/mediatek-mt6739-vs-mediat...