Know upfront: I'm not tech savvy. I bought a used Note 2 off of Ebay from a seller with over 4300 sales and over 99% satisfaction rating. He claims to be a verizon retailer who is selling this Note 2 that he sold originally, and took back in on trade for a new phone. I was concerned about getting a fake, so I've read a number of sites and watched a number of videos showing what to look for. Some things I've been able to do... some I haven't. 1. I ran a quadrant benchmark on the phone. It shows up above the HTC One (6795), which, I understand, is where it is supposed to be. 2. IMEI # under battery is typed into a search engine, and I get "Note 2". What is odd is I get no IMEI # by typing *#06# into the dialer (with or without hitting send). 3. Phone & display dimensions: The phone is supposed to be 5.95" long. The display is supposed to be 5.5. First, this seems wrong to me. These dimensions leave a total of .45" for the bezel at top and bottom of display. Looking at pictures of real Note 2 phones, there is more than .25" above and below the display, so I question the validity of these dimensions. My phone is ~5.95". The display is ~4 7/8". It's ~.5" from top (or bottom) of display to top (or bottom) of phone. Something that stands out to me when I look at comparisons of real vs fake Note 2 phones is the location of display in relation to the curve at corners of phone. On fake phones with smaller screens, the long axis of the screen noticeably ends before the curve (for corner of phone) begins. On real Note 2, the display ends almost exactly where the curve begins. Going by this vague description, my phone looks like the real McCoy. Can I ask for your opinion of whether this is real or not? I'll gladly get any other info if you would help me determine if it is real. Many thanks!
I do see from that link that I was measuring incorrectly. My display IS 5.5" diagonally, so that measures out correctly. Also, something I didn't post originally: My pen works. I saw in different videos and forums I found online that pens didn't work for many people who had fakes. My pen looks like the one shown on Samsung site. Not the cheap one shown with many of the fakes. It puts a small circle on the display when I hover an inch away from the screen. I haven't yet compared everything else on the link you've provided. I received the phone with a low battery, so I had to charge it. Will check it later. If anyone has any more suggestions on things to check, I'd appreciate it. Thanks.
This might be because the carrier disabled it. Yes, it's possible. Try dialing *#0*#. If it doesn't pull up the diagnostic screen, then it's almost guaranteed all dialing features are disabled. As you figured out when talking about the screen size (of anything - from monitors, TVs, etc), they are talking about the diagonal length. FYI: you'll also notice 1920x1080 or 1280x720 or 640x320, etc... means screen resolution. Just more jargon to try to impress as well as PPI (pixels per inch). Typically tells one how many pixels the screen is capable of physically displaying. Then there's aspect ratios like 16:10, 16:9, 4:3, etc. I'll leave it at that... If you really want to check the 'guts' of the phone, download from Google Play CPU-Z. Here's mine:
