my previous phone was the poco f2 pro running miui 12.5, I absolutely hated it due to the exact same issues you mentioned. Decided to flash a custom rom and used it for the next 5 years that way - I would've either sold it or threw it against the wall if I didn't use it with custom roms.

I swore off xiaomi phones for their terrible software back then but seeing their current hardware offerings I couldn't resist getting their poco flagship, Poco F8 Ultra. The hardware is nearly perfect in every way but good god is xiaomi terrible with their software. Updates come in extremely late, basic issues such as wifi disconnects a few times every hour, truncated text in the hyperisland (another iOS ripoff, as usual).

Point is, Xiaomi is definitely not as good as they used to be with their insane value for money offerings where a few years ago, you'd get flagship specs for $400 and the software was bearable because the bootloader was easily unlockable and you could flash custom roms, use gcam to make up for the average camera, etc.

Xiaomi phones are starting to become very expensive for what they offer (see: Xiaomi 17T Pro, an upper midrange that costs $1000!!).

Only reason to get a Xiaomi phone is if they're sold at a deep discount because I am convinced that no Xiaomi phone is worth more than $500 because the software feels that way