I have no idea if this bug is also present in the betas but what I do know is that this is a major issue regarding Nether portal linking in the current version of Minecraft.
In my world, I created a 5x3 (height and width in blocks) Nether portal using lava buckets inside a man made cave and went through to travel around the Nether for a bit. I then went back to my portal to return to the Overworld but was not teleported back to the portal I created in the Overworld. Instead, I was teleported to a taiga over 100 blocks away from my nether portal.
When I returned home, I entered my nether portal for a second time for an experiment. As usual, I went to the same Nether portal that was created when I first entered the Nether but when I entered the portal again, I was teleported to the same portal in the taiga, even after I destroyed it completely in Creative after making a backup copy. The screenshots (taken in creative) will show the portals I am talking about as well as their coordinates when I stand in them after deactivating them. The seed is -1512140161.
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[Mod] Umija5895M
Thank you for your report!
We're tracking this issue in MCPE-39609, so this ticket is being resolved and linked as a duplicate. Please see that ticket for a brief explanation of portal linking.
That ticket has already been resolved as working as intended, which means this is not considered a bug and won't be fixed. Please do not leave a comment on the linked ticket.
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This absolutely does not work as intended. I constructed only one portal on an offline single player world so this isn't an issue regarding multiple portals linking together which I am fully aware is not a bug. What was not intended was the fact that the portal I went through in the Nether (which generated after I went through my newly constructed portal for the first time) sent me to a location in the Overworld I have never been at. What was expected and should be intended is that the first Nether portal you made in the Overworld and the portal that generates in the Nether when you go through the first portal for the first time in your world should be linked automatically. It should not generate another portal in the Overworld in a separate location as it should have been linked to the one I made as it is the ONLY active portal that EXISTS in the Overworld. I didn't construct any other portals in the Nether or the Overworld, the only portal I constructed was the 5 x 3 (height x width) portal inside a man-made cave in the screenshots.
[Mod] Umija5895M
Your portal in the nether has coordinates of -4 97 -56. Multiplied by 8 to convert to overworld equivalent gives -32 97 -448. Your original overworld portal at -164 62 -341 is too far away (> 128 blocks) to return to, so the game creates a new portal. If you move your portal in the nether to about -20 YY -43 it should return to your original portal in the overworld.
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The coordinates you gave for where I should build a portal in the Nether to link to my original one are over a lava lake with with plenty of open space above for a portal to generate normally. From my understanding, if a portal has to generate on top of a lava lake in the Nether or an ocean in the Overworld, it will generate the portal above said lava lake / ocean with two pieces of obsidian on both sides of the entrances of the portal as is standard across all current versions of Minecraft. However, it failed to do that and somehow generated the portal on top of a cliff side where you said would be considered out of range to link to my original portal. With all due respect, I still believe this is unintended behavior and should be looked at further without being dismissed as an duplicate to an unrelated issue.
[Mod] Umija5895M
It will only generate the platform above the lava lake (or over an ocean in the overworld side) if there is no "safe" place to generate one within about 128 blocks or so. The location where your portal was actually generated is well within that range.