[Galaxy Note 4 General] infamousgeek:
Hi folks, this is my first post on this forum and I thought I’d share with you a recent misadventure of mine.

Since the Galaxy Note 4 is currently not being sold without a contract in my area, it created some kind of a parallel market for people getting the device by using their actual contract and then reselling it on classifieds websites like craigslist or kijiji.

Being the impulsive buyer that I am, I took the chance of buying one from one of those people. I met the guy in a parking lot, inspected the device quickly but still took the time to google the model number that was showed in the About Phone screen which checked out ok. It turns out I should have paid attention to more than the model number… As it turns out, I bought a fake Galaxy Note 4 for the full price of a genuine one.

What first tipped me off was when I got home I opened the box and saw that the phone apparently turned itself back on during transport and was displaying this screen:

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I thought to myself “Uh oh… this is not good”. A hard reboot made it disappear but after investigating, i realized that what I had in my hand was a very good knock off of Samsung’s famous Galaxy Note 4.

Needless to say, the seller was not reachable anymore….So to make a long story short, I ended up going to the store and bought a brand new (genuine) one that I had to put on a contract.

So now that I have the two devices in my hands, I thought of making a list of differences and post them here. It is to be noted that the real one that I bought is the SM-N910W8 which is the canadian version, while the fake one is labeled as the SM-N910F which I believe would refer to the US version. So keep in mind that some of these differences might be due to the different geographical versions that I have….but I doubt it. Feel free to correct me.

So here it is:

The Box: the main difference that I noticed was that the real one had a mention that it was printed in Vietnam. The fake one didn’t mention any printed location. The box’s color is closer to beige than white on the fake one.

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On the first look: they appear to be carbon copies, although the fake one seems to be of a less bring white than the real one. But you would need to have the two sitting next to each other to notice this.

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The battery: Other than text layout, the differences are that the real one states that it’s made in korea but assembled in Vietnam while the fake one is made in Japan. The voltage too is slightly different, 3.85v for the real one, 3.7 for the fake.

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Behind the cover: there are a few noticeable differences here, first the real one has some kind of a small white square insert behind the battery while the fake doesn’t. Also there is some greenish color on the SIM and SDCARD bezels on the fake one while the real one’s are silver. But the dead giveaway here is that on the fake one, the IMEI number printed on the back sticker did not even match the one in the About Phone screen in settings.

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The Cover: the inside of the cover’s colours don’t quite match as you can see here

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Apps & OS: This is where the differences become more obvious. First of all the fake one doesn’t have KNOX and all the samsung bloatware. Also, some stupid misspellings are visible here and there, like for instance instead of Messages it says Messagin. Also, instead of Internet it says Browser.

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The About Phone/Device screen in settings: Again, the differences here are obvious. First of all the real one has a white and blue theme and is labeled About Device while the fake one as an older black and white theme and is labeled About Phone. Then that’s where you can clearly see that the Baseband version is not an original Samsung one. Same thing for the Kernel.

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Other than that, I noticed that the two capacitive buttons on each side of the home button don’t seem to light up on the fake one. And generally speaking, the fake one is slower than the real one. I didn’t go as far as running some benchmark apps on it but I am sure it would not score anywhere near the real Samsung Note 4.