How to tell if a mobile phone is reconditioned, used or new – easily

Few things fill as much illusion as having the possibility of acquiring a new “high-end” cell phone. Sadly, scammers know this and take advantage of the buyer’s illusion and excitement to sell pirated equipment. Piracy has come very far, today thousands of stolen, reconditioned, or used cell phones are sold.

At almost the same price or a little less than the original or new, this undoubtedly worries many consumers. But not only those who buy cell phones, the stores where originals are sold have also been affected. All this leads us to look for ways to check if the equipment we are going to buy is the one we want.

How to check if the mobile phone is new

There are several ways to know if the mobile phone that they offer us is really a new device. The most used that we can suggest is checking the IMEI, the unique registration number for each cell phone. This is an identifier assigned to each Smartphone and it is universal and can be checked from anywhere in the world.

We are going to mention three quick and easy ways so that you can know the IMEI of the equipment you want to buy. Usually this appears in the box of the equipment on one of the sides, it also appears inside. In this case, if it is possible to remove the cover of the phone, you can see the IMEI next to the battery.

Finally, we can also recommend using a simpler method, which is to enter a code on the same computer. To do this, open the Call Dialing App, enter the following code: * # 06 # The IMEI of the device will appear immediately. Now we can check if the IMEI of the box is the same as it appears on the screen. If they are not the same, we can already deduce that something is wrong with this mobile phone, it may even be stolen.

When a cell phone is stolen, the most common and recommended thing is that they report it as soon as possible. This way they can block the IMEI of the cell phone, for this the thieves change the IMEI of the equipment. That is why it is important that you follow the steps that we recommend to check the IMEI of the cell phone you want to buy.

How to know if a mobile phone has been reconditioned?

Another way to know if the mobile phone is new, stolen or refurbished, is to perform a performance test. To perform this test we need to use benchmarking tools that are available in the App created for this purpose. Through these App, we can determine if the mobile phone meets the requirements of its range or not.

If when using one of these benchmarking apps the team gives us a different performance than it should. Most likely, we are dealing with a reconditioned team , that is, with modified components, a pirate team.

There are other ways to specifically determine whether or not the mobile phone offered to us has its original components. Someone may have doubts about the components of the equipment, especially if the equipment is high-end. It is very common, for example, iPhone models are modified to be sold at slightly lower prices.

To determine specifically if the components have been changed we can use App created to determine the performance of the components. These apps allow you to check essential components such as the processor, the GPU and the battery that are usually changed.

Another way to determine if the mobile phone is new or used is by checking the warranty on it. Warranties are proof of the authenticity of the equipment, and by checking them we can establish whether it is new or not.

Their verification varies depending on the brand of mobile phone, some have online technical support. As in the case of Huawei that has a site with support for whether it is original.

Other brands such as Sony, LG, and Samsung do not have a direct tool, but you can call their technical service. Thanks to all these mentioned tools, the illusion of buying a new mobile phone will not turn into a nightmare.