You should absolutely never run a phone with MIUI, or any other similar OS which you have absolutely no idea what it's doing under your nose. First thing you should do is wipe it and install Lineage.
> any other similar OS which you have absolutely no idea what it's doing under your nose
This seems to be most OSes, sadly :(
Xiaomi has Android One models with Google software. Though I’m not sure that they don’t bundle some malware there.
I have A1 (Android One phone), if there is malware, they hide it well. There is no obvious MIUI stuff
The thing about their Android One offering is that they don't bring their A game hardware-wise, they don't really advertise them, and it's confusing to find them in their other phones.
Here's some context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19452806 I'm not sure if it's a bad software, but there was some packages that I have no idea about, definitely not from Google.
Sadly, competitors like Xiaomi (IMHO, one among the worst manufacturers [1]), Nokia HMD Global, Huawei, Samsung, Apple and many others do not give many opportunities to Sony Mobile be profitable business. I wish they will improve marketing and sales channel.
[1] Annoying telemetry that you cannot opt-out and does not care if your Internet uses mobile data or Wi-Fi. Ridiculous permission requirements for apps, i.e. Weather requires permission to make a phone call (https://en.miui.com/thread-1851703-1-1.html) and Calendar to send SMS messages.