Buying S5

Your best bet would be buy it of swappa to avoid a far s5 since they seem to be poop get up everywhere lately

Sent from my SM-G900T using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

sadekmefti said:

Hello mates,

I'm thinking of buying a second hand S5, anything I should know to avoid fakes?
Which S5 should I buy?
Are there any know bugs so far?

Thanks in advance

Sent from my GT-I9100

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Look at this videos about an S5 fake 1:1... maybe this will help to avoid fakes...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gY2CgUO47CU&list=UUtT2VnurQKOAA0I1EKKHSPA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLCkrAWvvw0&list=UUtT2VnurQKOAA0I1EKKHSPA

sadekmefti said:

Thanks mate, what about the S5 versions, which one is better?

Sent from my GT-I9100

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The SM-G900F has the best support if you want to tinker with your phone.

sadekmefti said:

I'm thinking of buying a second hand S5, anything I should know to avoid fakes?

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Watch a handful of youtube videos about S5 fakes to get a reasonable sense of how fakes can be identified.

Do not buy a used S5 from a stranger at market price. Wait for a bargain or distress sale to balance the risk. You risk hidden defects, fakes and in particular the risk of the phone being stolen and blacklisted. Note that some sellers may report a phone as "stolen" after selling it vis a vis insurance fraud. A phone may also be subsequently blacklisted due to the seller having an unpaid phone subsidy in arrears.

These are substantial risks and you would do well to walk away from transactions involving shady characters unless you enjoy buying expensive, soon to be blacklisted and unusable paperweights.

The sm-g900t (TMB S5) is the phone of choice for North Americans. It has the substantial advantage of an unlocked bootloader. Not to mention access to more bands than some other variants. So it's a better choice than an ATT model, even if you intend to use it on ATT.

Verizon, Sprint and USC are oddballs. The world over uses GSM, but these three cling to the incompatible CDMA system and their models only have limited overlap with GSM carriers.

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to check if it fake or not look at the heart rate monitor and if you want to check it before opening the box , first take the imei number from the box and then go to imei.info and put the imei number and you will see if it fake or not , and the best choise is the model SM-G900F

Galaxy_Guy said:

to check if it fake or not look at the heart rate monitor

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The heart rate monitor works fine on some fakes e.g. No.1 (brand) "S7" clone. So that isn't a reliable test.
And IMEI numbers check out on many fakes.
Best model is subjective and highly dependent on where you live and what carrier you will be using it on.

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fffft said:

The heart rate monitor works fine on some fakes e.g. No.1 (brand) "S7" clone. So that isn't a reliable test.
And IMEI numbers check out on many fakes.
Best model is subjective and highly dependent on where you live and what carrier you will be using it on.

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for me as an expert with devices i can realize the quality and the original one
but normal people may get fake s5 :crying: damn it

and correction of your information , here in syria there is so many fake phones almost of them are samsungs clone

and everytime i used the imei way to check if it fake , it works.
but don't know if there are sellers in another regions that put an original imei to fake phones

If someone watches half a dozen S5 fake review videos on youtube, they would have a very good idea of where most fakes fall down and how they can be identified.

There are many characteristics that will identify some, but not all fakes, e.g. missing logos, non functional heart rate monitors, lower resolution camera, less RAM, etc. None of which will detect all fakes. Perhaps the best method, one that will work for all fakes to date is to run an extended benchmark suite. None of the fake processors will come close to an authentic S5 score.

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@sadekmefti Absolutely yes buy it, i upgraded from my Beloved Gti9100 S2 => SMG900H S5 it is a big big upgrade i bought mine 4hours ago, it is charging up now it has a beauty of a screen , one awkward thing is the TW is ****ing crap! they should have innovated it more , i love samsung so i keep buying their products, TW seems to be the same **** i wish they had a similar launcher as the HTC Sense6.0 htc's sense is very very innovative and neat looking, but who care we can just switch Launchers easily so no problem mate. I still need to use it more to get to know more about it I will eventually root it , and i believe that will increase its performance even further just like it did on my beloved S2. In the end i would highly recoommend it Go for it buy it

Annd btw @fffft i have seen your post mentioning faked ones ! i have checked up on the IMEI before buying my s5 , buutt my question is will getting the IMEI check right Be enough to spot whether it is faked or not ?? i checked on the official imei website and the phone i bought (S5) was registered there so i guess that my s5 is very original then ?!?!