Where to buy a <<legit>> Android phone?
- Joined: Jun 15th, 2005
- Posts: 23
thinking about buying either a Samsung S2 or HTC Desire HD. I know that Zhongguancun is the place to go generally. But over the years I've purchased a lot of phones there ( we used to buy Palm phones for our customers)and sometimes these phones are refurbished it seems. We have seen some that are quite clearly returned products originally packaged with a cell phone carrier's incentive plan.
Of course there's always the difference between 行货 and 水货。 （ made for China market versus the gray market products)
How can you tell if the graymarket products are new? I called a couple of shops and since they only want to offer a 90 day warranty it makes me a bit skittish since this is going to be the most expensive purchase of ever made for a phone. the last thing I want to do is get into it with some shopkeeper who doesn't want to honor the warranty. Are there any graymarket sellers that the phones would be honored by the factory itself?
does anyone have any recommendation for a specific shop or any other advice I could use?
Zhongguancun would be preferred.
Thanks a lot!
rxdhuang
Re: Where to buy a <<legit>> Android phone?
Right now I think all they have in the markets are grey market phones with the seal broken, for quality assurance purposes they tell me. Anyways, I bought my s2 at a pretty big shop at bai nao hui and so far no problems.
However I have seen the s2 at sundan (the big electronics store underground at the village) for 5k, so if you can get some piece of mind for a price, 4,999rmb to be exact.
mjtaylor
Re: Where to buy a <<legit>> Android phone?
taobao
Musta Lammas
Re: Where to buy a <<legit>> Android phone?
I recently bought my Samsung Galaxy S2 (SGS2) at 北京市朝阳区东四环中路78号大成国际中心B2座0707. Their phone number is 400-810-1100. They are actually an "official" vendor on TaoBao (located in Beijing) if you just want to look them up online.
The phone seems to be legitimate, but the barcode on the packaging had been covered with a replacement which happened to match the bar code on the inside back of the phone. I do not know what judgement to pass on that. I got a good price on the phone but the disadvantage for me is that the phone is catered to (restricted for) the Chinese market with different Chinese firmware. That means that the phone is not Google, Android Market, Facebook, Skype, or YouTube friendly. I cannot get these apps as far as I can tell so one might have to use a VPN to access Google, Facebook, or YouTube. I guess I can forget about Skype and a whole bunch of other cool utilities unless I can get Android Market somehow.
I dialed *#272*IMEI# (enter your phone's IMEI) and saw that only CHZ and CHN (firmware?) setups were available. I have tried both without being able to distinguish between the two.
As far as I can tell from the XDA-developers forum, trying to install a new Android OS in order to get around the local (Chinese firmware) restrictions results in soft bricking (inoperability), so I have not tried that. Supposedly someone has come up with a Chinese language solution called "ownhere" that allows one to get Android Market and other goodies without having to install a new Android OS on the Chinese market SGS2's.
http://bbs.gfan.com/android-2099143-1-1.html
I have not done this myself because I do not understand Chinese or what to do. So I am looking for advice from anyone who has any ideas or knows of a gray market service that can do this for me in Beijing or through TaoBao.
Any responses would be appreciated. Cheers.
Samsung Galaxy SII GT-I9100G
Android 2.3.5, I9100GZCKI1
China Unicom 3G