How to check if android phone is Refurbished or not

If you are going out to purchase a smartphone, you should make sure that you are spending your hard-earned money on a Non-refurbished phone. Checking a refurbished phone may become a little tricky at times. We’ll show you multiple methods to check if any phone is refurbished or not.

• How to customize your android phone
• How to flash stock Firmware on any MTK device
• Root and TWRP for LG G3
• How to change custom ROM without loosing your data

There are two main types of refurbished phones

1. Factory refurbished phones
2. Locally refurbished phones

What is a refurbished phone?

If a phone had a fault during manufacturing of it, Gets returned without being used, or gets replaced during warranty the company resells it in Factory refurbished batch. These phones are more keen to get faulty again and you should avoid getting them. Even the company wants to sell refurbished good as refurbished, Many of bad shopkeepers try to sell them as factory-new.

Another type of refurbished is made in local repair shops. These devices are those which are faulty and also in rough condition. So the repair workshop guys repair them and give them a new cheap housing (a.k.a casing). Some of the bad shopkeepers even convert Korean phones into International models. Yeah, You read it right.

Now coming back to the topic. How to identify them?

How to identify Factory Refurbished Android phones?

Note: This method is only for some big smartphone companies. Like Samsung, LG etc. If you have some chinese or any cheap android phone, This wouldn’t work. As these cheap chinese companies don’t even bother to produce refurbished batch.

• Open the phone dialer app.
• Type ##786# OR *#*#786#*#* ( No need to press Call button, it will automatically take you to the RTC screen)

• Now scroll down and you shall see refurbished status like shown in the image below.

The method above may not work for every factory refurbished phone, but it may also work on many.

How to check locally refurbished Android Phones?

Now this section is gonna take a lot to describe. As you may have seen that LG, Samsung and many other multinational android OEMs make their phones differently for many markets. I will take LG G2 as an example here but you can identify any refurbished phone following similar steps.

So, LG G2 comes in more or less 8 models, F320K, F320L and F320S for korean markets, D800, D801, VS980, LS980, D802TA, D803 for American Markets and D802, the international version. So which model you think is the most valuable?

The international version, of-course. Shopkeepers out there in local markets, do import some Korean and American versions of smartphones in really bad condition then fix the faults and install a new housing a.k.a Casing. Some of them even go one step further and attach Fake box and accessories with them.

• Root and Install CWM recovery in LG G2
• Root and CWM recovery for LG Nexus 5

So how can you identify them?

You can identify refurbished phones with these tips given below

1. Check for the Build-Quality of the phone, If the phone has cheap quality of casing, Leave it immediately.
2. Check the weight of the phone, Locally refurbished smartphones tend to be lighter than Original ones.
3. Check LTE if the phone supports LTE bands and you have LTE coverage.
4. If the phone is in Excellent condition, Double check it because it may have changed casing.
5. Attach a hands free to the phone and start FM Radio, This is the best way to identify Korean phones with housing of international model.
6. You can also ask the shopkeeper to open the phone to see if there is not anything wrong going inside. Like the images given below, The backpanel is of LG D802 but the internals are of D801.
7. Don’t greed for 10/10 phone, if the phone has some little scuff here and there, it is a good to go. If you will look for absolutely new conditions, Remember All that glitters is not gold

If you still find it difficult to identify refurbished smartphones, You can post your query below and we’ll get to you ASAP.

Share it if you liked it. Do join us at Facebook, Twitter and Google+ Cheers 🙂