Sunday, 11 October 2015

Should you buy a refurbished HTC One from aliexpress?



A refurbished HTC One from overseas is pretty cheap, but is it worth it?

I have both an original and a refurbished (aliexpress) model.
I tested the refurbished one with HTCs hidden function test (*#*#3424#*#*, dialer) and everything worked flawlessly, but I found some flaws afterwards:

-the IR-remote doesn't work
-the glass of the front camera isn't flush with the case
-button backlight bleed on the bottom of the front:


I also opened both up to see if there are differences inside (the gold one is refurbished and the black is original):


-there was no glue holding the back in place, only clips:


-some tape, covering the connectors, is missing:

-looks like corrosion on the headphone jacks soldering points:

-two pins(antennas maybe) missing which should touch the back cover(GSM and HSPA work, can't test LTE though):


Conclusion:

I think I made a good choice, the two noticeable flaws(IR-blaster and backlight bleed) don't bother me. Alse unlocking the bootloader via htc-dev worked flawlessly. But your mileage may vary, as there are so many different shops on aliexpress.



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