Is an S9+ Dual Sim 128GB for 682€ a good deal?

Hadron said:

Well the price is clearly a decent saving, so it's primarily a question of trust. I can't help you with the seller, that will have to be your call, but the obvious question is why is the price so low? If this is a "grey import" then I'd have 2 questions I'd want to consider:

1) What sort of warranty does it come with (and what is that worth to you)?

2) What country was it originally intended for? One reason for asking that is that Samsung introduced "regional locks" a few years ago to cut down on such imports: basically the phone needs to be used for 5-10 minutes of calls with a SIM from the intended region before it can accept one from a different region (even if the phone is "unlocked"). So if it is an import I'd want to check the status of any regional lock, as well as of course ensuring that the phone is unlocked.

(If the phone was originally a carrier-branded model then that could be a further complication for receiving updates).

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mikedt said:

If it's a dual-SIM S9+ on Ebay, it's very likely coming from Asia, often Hong Kong. Samsung won't provide warranty service for grey import devices, and so it's down to whatever the vendor can provide. Any problems, and you may have to ship it back to where it came from at your expense, and wait.

Also you could be charged import duty and VAT, which depending on what EU"€" country you're in might be as much as 27% VAT.

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Thank you for your messages! I asked the seller about the region lock and if it was originally carrier branded -- clearly it avoided the question by saying and I quote: "This phone is supplied by our Asian supplier, which is a Asia version. The phone is unlocked but sometimes phones are not compatible with your service provider." So, you two just saved me a ton of money .

The phone was meant to be shipped within the EU, from a French warehouse so I wouldn't pay VAT (they offer 1 year warranty + parts and labor). They say the model has the Exynos 9810 in the description but if it comes from Asia, shouldn't only the Korean model come with the Exynos 9810? It's the G965FD according to them (their English is pretty erroneous and they appear to be beating around the bush, which concerns me).

I think I'll just look for an S7 Edge or S8, S8+ and save some money from other sellers perhaps? I don't even want such an expensive Samsung device anymore and if I were to spend close to 1000€ it better have an S-Pen or otherwise be a Pixel 3 XL.

mikedt said:

FYI it should be Exynos, as it's only mainland China and Japan variants that have Snapdragon, because of CDMA/EVDO networks in those countries. The US has Snapdragon S9+ as well, but that's it according to Samsung.

The "French" Ebay vendor may be a long way from France, like they're in Hong Kong or something.

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Yes, the seller really is from Hong Kong (guess being a top-rated seller still doesn't help me considering the goods probably won't work as intended on my location) . They do sell S8 and S8+ devices but I'm assuming they're all from Asia (despite having an Exynos 8895 chipset and being "unlocked").

I can't seem to find anyone selling an S8/S8+ that is sealed for a comfortable price. I found some with the S7 Edge, UK variants at least (but I'd really like to be able to find an adequate S8/S8+ model that is actually meant for European regions).