Have you tried to buy an smartphone then you found an implausible inexpensive offers? Are those sellers being scammers? Should you buy from them trustfully or not?
Well, we all know that no one wants to lose his money by selling his stuff trivially, but why some people keep offering a very clean iphone d’occasion or almost new with less prices than in regular shops where new smartphones cost you thousands money!
What’s the trick behind the scene, is it fraud deal and the smartphones are non-genuine devices or it’s real?
Mostly, these cheap smartphones are real efficient smartphones but they are locked and not Chinese version; locked means that smartphone can work properly with only one specific cellular network like (AT&T in US) according to an authorized contract between Apple co. and that operator, this lock to prevent users from violating the contract (using a non-operator’s SIM card) otherwise you cannot activate your phone and use it as well with another cellular network; while Chinese version means that smartphone dedicated to work due to the updated rules and frequencies of the cellular operators in the mainland and if it is not Chinese version it might be not operating 4G (LTE) services but only 3G (The same what happened with most smartphones-US version which cannot run 4G for China Telecom although it is unlocked smartphone that because it is not Chinese version)
Practically, too many locked smartphones imported from different countries like Japan, US and Canada to sell them in China with cheap and attractive offers; these locked smartphones can be used locally by using a special technique called “SIM card stickers”, these stickers basically use intelligent mechanisms by providing a list of codes for mobile phones and testing them one by one until they match the baseband frequency in the locked smartphone with the Chinese operator to receive the signal!
Disadvantages of SIM Card Stickers
Although the samsung reconditionné phone is cheap as compared as the original ones but here you are the disadvantages of using SIM card stickers:
1. If Apple upgrade the operating system (from iOS 11 to 12 as an example), then locked smartphones need upgraded new stickers otherwise you can’t use back to locked status!
2. Using stickers sometimes disable the hotspot feature so you cannot share the internet with other devices.
3. Stickers slow down the GSM and internet connections and fail to operate 4G properly.
4. If the sticker gets damaged, then you cannot reach to all of your data in the smartphone till purchasing new efficient sticker which is consider as a big real risk!
How can one recognize smartphone’s version to know whether it is Chinese or not?
Simply, in the smartphone specifications, there’s a model number followed by two letters, these two letters specify smartphones country version, e.g. below:
CH: China
LL: USA, Canada
J: Japan
KH: Korea
ZP: Hong Kong, Macau
The big surprise with the non-Chinese version appears when many of the refurbished smartphone contains an internal SIM card sticker had been integrated in the main board where you cannot find it completely!
So please consider all of these important notes before following the cheap price only .
