we used my phone for Android Auto. Wired Android Auto, and I still had to hold my phone in front of the air con vent the entire time to stop the music skipping.

Oh damn :O

Thinking I might get an Oppo Find X9 Pro in a couple months

Yeah, I’ve heard that model has really good battery life and cameras. I am personally using the Vivo X300 Pro, which I have mixed thoughts on. The cameras are excellent, and the phone basically acts as my powerbank for smaller devices. However, the OS is sooo annoying and gets in my way (annoying “security check” popup whenever I install any app that always fails with a big warning unless it’s on some hidden whitelist, which seems to basically be Vivo stock apps mostly). I still use it (w/ a custom launcher) since it has a good camera, but if I were to get a new phone, I would like to try a degoogled ROM.

Hopefully ColorOS is less annoying to use compared to OriginOS!

You might want to look at the Fairphone 6 as well if you live in Europe (assumed since you mentioned GBP), it has good degoogled ROM support (one of the only modern phones that have that nowadays) and developing mobile Linux support too which is kind of cool, and it’s super repairable too! Even the stock OS seems pretty nice to use compared to OneUI, OriginOS, HyperOS, and that sort. The Fairphones are midrange phones priced at a midrange price (no idea why reviewers always compare it with devices twice the price), and the latest iteration has some solid hardware like a nice 120 Hz OLED screen and good battery life too. And it’s always nice to support the little guys :D