I will never buy a Mediatek phone, for the sole reason that there are no custom roms for it, since Mediatek does not publish the necessary binaries as they are supposed to
Yes, this is an important contention for them. Hopefully, things change so custom Roms are better supported for users.
Most units shipped doesn’t mean most popular. In my experience Mediatek SOCs are the worst. They are the cheapest, but also the worst. I would take any Samsung or Qualcomm over them.
Hmm, I disagree. While they may be cheaper. They are certainly not worse. The dimensity 9300 for example is a flagship SoC which can match or even surpass the 8 gen 3. I have used quite a few mediatek powered smartphones. They are a solid performer overall. For the same price you get either a weak Qualcomm SoC or a heating Exynos from samsung. In that regard they are very good.
From what I’ve read, they are considerably cheaper than Snapdragon. So entry level phones tend to use them more to keep the price of the phone down. Much like Nothing did with the 2a.