After months of not really finding a good replacement for my RAM-fried OnePlus 2, I finally found one that checked all the boxes and got a Huawei P20 this weekend. It has the best camera (105 DxOmark) and battery (3400mAh) in the smallest form factor and at midrange prices. It basically looks like an iPhone X but has all the software benefits of Android / Nova Launcher. I like it much more than I thought, and it cost me only €40. I'm two-thirds into Piketty after about ten days of listening. I can say that it is the most interesting boring book I've read in a long time. I'm considering getting the hardcover when I'm done with it - partly to impress people, but mostly because some day I want to have a long bookshelf of big, heavy, amazing books that I can look back on. I now also have Instagram. It's fun, but I wish I could buy off the ads.
Be super diligent with your security on the Huawei. They are well-known for inserting backdoors that the Chinese state uses for numerous unknown purposes. I used to work in the field of internet network security, and the exploits and backdoors - all the way down to the chip level - in Huawei devices were legion. And we were discovering more all the time. And that was four years ago...
While I most definitely heed your warning, I'm jumping ship from one Chinese brand to the other. So I'm used to this: Huawei is supposedly worse, but I doubt it is much worse. I have all but given up on feeling secure about what I do on my phone - it's not a "lesser of two evils" kinda thing, it's an "everyone is a devil" kinda thing.
The hardcover of Piketty also has all the graphs and charts that he keeps referring to. We got my wife a Oneplus 6. It appears that the P20 is only 2/3rds compatible with T-Mobile... and is a bitch to buy in the US.