[Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact Guides, News, & Discussion] nlra:
I don't know how widely known this is or how many people have this on their radar, but there seems to be a very healthy market out there for "new" or "like-new", once-flagship smartphone models. And it's somehow being successfully filled by operations that, as far as I have been able to deduce, manage to collect used smartphones en-masse (from where? e-waste collectors/recyclers? buying them off of the original manufacturers -- perhaps as discards from their repair departments -- for $cheap$? unclear), they then take out any still-working internals/guts from the units they've collected, fabricate brand-new external casings (of the same material as the original product...so, glass, metals, plastics, etc.) that can almost pass for the genuine article even under close scrutiny, re-package the working electronics (mainboards, etc.) in those new casings, and then even go to the lengths to make counterfeit packaging for these re-manufactured phones that LOOKS like the original manufacturers' retail box for that model, shrink-wrap them, and then (usually) turn around and sell the phone as "new".

These guys are all over eBay and AliExpress (& similar outfits). I was quite stunned when I first ran into this, and realized what was going on. You mean there are enough people that will buy these, and at the prices that they're asking for them, for this to be profitable and worth doing at scale? Amazing.

It's hard to call the entire result "counterfeit" exactly, since there are enough original components in what gets shipped. Honestly, I'm not sure what to call them. But one of the problems is that, as amazing as the work of these refurbishers is, many (most) are being more than a bit deceptive when they go out of their way to re-create the original retail packaging and then list them as "brand new in box / old stock". That's a straight-up lie. (Also, many of them come packaged with very obviously 100% counterfeit accessories, like chargers and earbuds which are made to look like the original OEM accessories *externally*, but which absolutely are not original under-the-hood.)

They don't only deal in Sony phones, but Xperia models do seem to be a big seller for these guys, and I had a couple of Z5 Compact samples pass through my hands a couple of years ago...I got curious and wanted to see for myself what one would actually get if someone were to purchase one of these. My takeaway from this was that it's truly amazing how much attention they pay to certain details on one hand, while they simultaneously cut obvious corners on the other. The back glass wasn't original on either, but it was EASILY the best non-OEM Z5c back glass replica I've ever seen (99.9% of the ones you see listed on eBay -- even the ones that purport to be "original" -- are utter crap). The plastic shell/housing was IMMACULATE and with zero scratches/gouges/markings of any kind, as if they managed to sweet-talk Sony into letting them have the original injection molds...the texture was perfect, the color was 100% spot-on, etc. But the earbuds and charger included in the box were garbage (e.g., the charger was labeled as a genuine Sony QC2.0 model, but the label printing was all smudged up, it got SUPER hot, it felt much lighter and hollower than the genuine article, and I tested it and it NEVER went into Quickcharge mode...counterfeit all the way around), the printed literature that was included didn't look at ALL like what Sony includes in their boxes, the card stock they used for the box itself was thinner, and there are issues with the printing on the box (again: counterfeit).

Anyway, one of the things that struck me was that both of the phones still had their bootloader lock & original contents of the TA partition intact. It got me thinking: hmm, I wonder what the odds of that are?... Not everybody unlocks their bootloaders, of course, but amongst Android users, and perhaps especially among Xperia owners, I get the impression that it's not exactly uncommon. At the same time, preserving one's TA partition -- assuming it's even possible on your specific model -- is knowledge that's obscure enough and fiddly enough to execute on that most people who unlock their Xperia's bootloader probably don't even bother...and not only because of the relative difficulty, but also because they probably don't even realize it's a thing. I'd be shocked if most simply didn't Google "xperia bootloader unlock" and then click the link to the official Sony web page at the top of the results that walks them through how to do it. So if I were a betting man, I'd wager that of all Xperias out there with bootloaders that have been unlocked by their owners, easily the majority of them have permanently lost their DRM keys.

Could it be that these refurbishing shops have somehow found a way to regenerate the contents of the TA partition for the models they remanufacture? It seems hard to believe that they could do this without access to the original Sony root signing keys, but...?

For the longest time, when it came to Xperia flagship models sold by these guys, the Kitakami device family was pretty much where they seemed to have stalled out at, as far as what the newest models were that they were selling. But over the last couple of years, I've seen Tone, Yoshino, and even Tama devices of this caliber now flooding the market. I'm super tempted to pick up, say, an XZ1 Compact that's been refurbished in this way, just to see if it is as good as the Z5c samples I've seen were. But in addition to potentially just providing us with access to tons of cosmetically-flawless stock of XZ1c at somewhat-reasonable prices, I have to wonder if this also provides at least a glimmer of hope that it's *possible* to truly restore all of the software on these models to 100% from-the-factory state (complete with bootloader lock, recomputed DRM keys, etc.). I'd sure love to know where they're finding all of the phones they're rebuilding, what exactly (if anything) the software side of the rebuild process entails, and if they *do* have access to special knowledge or tools, how they acquired them...

If anyone out there has bought one of the reman'd XZ1 Compacts, I'd love to know what your experience has been like.

Here is an interesting Youtube video I found by one of these outfits (perhaps the main one even?), showing them going through a QC checklist on a Z3c post-refurbishment but before being packaged up. It's very interesting...the protective plastic with the incorrect "Xperia Z3 mini" text is very clearly not the same as the original (one of those areas where their attention to detail is less impressive...and interestingly, both of my Z5c samples had the *exact same diagram* on theirs and *also* said "Xperia Z5 mini"), but you can also see a reproduction phone barcode sticker that is laid out to look like what Sony would print and stick on the original retail box.