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Is this S3 fake?

EA925

EA925

Lurker
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.
 
Am I the only one that finds the upside down battery to be a bit odd?

No "Samsung" logo on the front nor "Galaxy S III" on the back either.
 
It clearly is fake, the baseband, the kernel and the build do not seem original. Also, look at the WiFi icon, the stock TW icon isn't like that at all.
 
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They've done a really good job but I can see some subtle differences on the shape of the moulded plastic.
 
These are the true copycats who lure people into buying products that aren't what they are presented as. These companies should be sued for what they do, rather than suing companies like Samsung, etc.
 
how thick is it? does the screen seem hd? its obviously a fake phone just want to get an idea on a few things
 
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.
 
Mine did actually have a very similar screen protector on it when I got mine, but the font is different, as is the battery font on OPs picture. Definitely fake, but quite an impressive fake to be honest :)
 
Mine also had a similar screen protector on it when I took it out of the box.
Also noticed someone saying it doesn't have Galaxy S3 on the back of the phone. Mine doesn't either so that means nothing.
 
Maybe the US version does not have that screen protector, because my I9300 had that sticker on. Well, mine was bought from Three, can't be fake, can it? :D
 
My friend, this does not look good if you were hoping to get more than a half-a** knock off. As was stated before, I wouldn't use it as my primary or daily phone.

Good Luck.
 
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.
 
ExtremeNerd said:
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.
Click to expand...


No doubt about it. It's a clone. I wonder how much the OP payed for it?
 
rayhipkiss said:
No doubt about it. It's a clone. I wonder how much the OP payed for it?
Click to expand...

I don't know, but this is why I don't do Craigslist. I know me, and right now I'd be having someone track the seller down. Afterwards........
:car:
:secruity:
:boxing:
 
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