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Is this S3 fake?

EA925

Lurker
Jun 25, 2012
7
0
CA
I ended up buying an S3 on Craigslist. and after further examining it I think its fake. this is supposed to be the international unlocked version but its stuck on 4.1.1 and its not upgrading. there are no samsung apps on the phone but some random apps did come preinstalled. the notification light bleeds through the plastic(not sure if its supposed to do that). here are some pics what do you guys think?

What are some methods that I could try to confirm 100% authenticity?

*edit* the the boot animation also flashes welcome a bunch of times.

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That doesn't look right to me. The first thing is that it says it's on 4.1.1 yet the build number ( which I've never heard of before) says it's ics. A quick Google search of the build number produced a few links about cloned gs3's. There's also the baseband. I've never heard of it and from my experience all the gs3 basebands start with i9300.

I'd also edit out your imei number from the battery and repost that picture as it's not wise to display your imei online.
 
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That's definitely a fake. It's a Chinese knock off. I saw hundreds of them while I was overseas. Play with it for a few minutes and you will see it is NOT a legit S3. It costs about $30 over there. It does not have a real quad core processor. Or 2GB of RAM.

The biggest reason to know it is fake is because of the sticker. Samsung doesn't put that on their phones. It is a clear plastic screen protector with a few instructions, not specs. I hope you didn't pay more than $50 for it. It could be a unique play toy, but not a daily phone.
 
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I stand corrected. Apparently the international version does have that screen protector. The US ones don't, and after seeing all of the Chinese fakes with it, I assumed that was the case.

However, I stand by it being a fake. They take pride in their knock-offs, so the appearance is usually perfect at first. Turning it on changes things. It is near impossible to use because of lag.
 
Upvote 0
I stand corrected. Apparently the international version does have that screen protector. The US ones don't, and after seeing all of the Chinese fakes with it, I assumed that was the case.

However, I stand by it being a fake. They take pride in their knock-offs, so the appearance is usually perfect at first. Turning it on changes things. It is near impossible to use because of lag.


No doubt about it. It's a clone. I wonder how much the OP payed for it?
 
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