Is The LG V40 The Best Mid-Range Phone Still in 2020? - I Can't Decide

Finally my contract ended and going back to buying outright, so in search of a new phone. Though what's happened to the market? $500 mid/upper mid are now $1000 and $1,000 flagship area are now $2,000 - geesh.

What I want in a phone:
Main Use: Productivity (emails, web use), Photography/some video, Actual phone calls (though that seems to be reducing these days), quality audio. I Don't play games - so that aspect isn't important.

Features:
CPU: Reasonably Fast performance. Although no gaming, I still want things to be zippy. I'm forever turning off my Samsung S8 screen thinking the fingerprint or button press didn't recognise and what feels like 15+ seconds for Chrome to launch fully.

HEADPHONE JACK: A must. Yes I have bluetooth headphones as well, but so sick of batteries running flat so mostly use wired for better SQ anyway. Along with plugging in a lapel mic from time to time. So would like audio to be decent quality.

microSD Card Slot: Why oh why are many getting rid of this? Given no games etc, I still find 64GB on phone and 128GB SD card I have to be careful and remove videos etc from time to time (can only see this getting worse with more 4K video). I could live with 256GB, but a bit worried with 128GB (I do prefer to carry a reasonable amount of music on my phone due to no internet coverage at times).

CAMERA: I'm a mid-high end dSLR user (Nikon D850) so a decent camera is a must. Not the biggest on video, but still take some so EIS/OIS on 4K would be nice.

GPS Tracking: I ride a motorcycle and track rides and use as my speedo. This seems to be a huge battery killer (given screen usage as well) - have solved with plugging in to power, but quite often forgot to plug it in.

So with all that, In a way keep coming back to the LG V40 - only downsides seem small battery and cameras now equal to the latest mid/upper mid range phones, maybe a tad better.

Other phones I've looked at:
ASUS Zenfone 6: I really wanted this phone but they were at first plagued with motherboard problems, and seem so ridiculously priced and hard to obtain in AUS (Have considered buying from B&H in the USA)

Xiaomi 9T Pro: Not bad but general audio & no card slot

Xiaomi Note 10 Pro: $1K for a Xiaomi? Seems overpriced - no doubt will drop in time, once again average audio, no card slot (though the Pro model is 256GB).

ASUS ROG II: TobyDeals actually have this at a great price ($765 from memory) - Yes it's aimed at Gaming, however 6,000mAh battery would go a long way and with a SD855+ would be damn fast as a daily, but no card slot and not the best implementation of the cameras.

Huawei Pro 30: Looks like a new model must be coming out soon as a few price drops of late, but once sold no stock replacement - but sadly no headphone jack.

Original budget was $500 (why I was looking at Xiaomi), but then realising that doesn't get you much anymore so seems to be $800 now and since a higher budget would be good for the store to take Zip Pay.

Any other suggestions ????

Thanks in advance.