As far as I know, Xiaomi phones have unlockable bootloaders and you can put Lineage or /e/OS on it, or even PostmarketOS or Ubuntu Touch, Apple locks you into their completely proprietary ecosystem. Point is, regardless of which is more secure out of the box, Xiaomi phones likely can be a lot more secure if you put some effort into it.
The problem is the radio module - no matter what you put in your xiaomi it will still register on Chinese phone frequencies. All drivers code is also from xiaomi, that can’t go anywhere.
As far as I know, Xiaomi phones have unlockable bootloaders and you can put Lineage or /e/OS on it, or even PostmarketOS or Ubuntu Touch, Apple locks you into their completely proprietary ecosystem. Point is, regardless of which is more secure out of the box, Xiaomi phones likely can be a lot more secure if you put some effort into it.
The problem is the radio module - no matter what you put in your xiaomi it will still register on Chinese phone frequencies. All drivers code is also from xiaomi, that can’t go anywhere.