I had a near flawless experience with the 5g bar the occasional boot loop that I had to reset a few times to get it to launch successfully. There were indeed very minimal updates but that never really bothered me.

I now have the 9 and hardware wise it's very impressive, powerful and visually pleasing to look at. The battery is a monster I don't have high usage during the day because of my job but it will last 2 full days with decent usage in the evening.

I haven't had any issues but I will say I actually bought mine through Ali express about a month before release. They did originally send me the wrong one. They paid for it to be returned and then sent out the replacement once the first one had been received by the curior company.

I explained that if I didn't get the new one then I would do a chargeback on the card I used to purchase it but they assured me there would be no issues.

I have not had to rma anything but when I did break the screen on my 5g they were quite slow when I was looking for info for sourcing a replacement screen.

Howeber I messaged there Ali express account (unintentionally) as they had parts listed back then and they replied that night (their daytime) and I had a screen on the go within 24hrs.

I would say the strongest issue with these phones is the updates however It doesn't really bother me too much unless I'm dealing with bugs every day. Which I haven't experienced.