I have an old Motorola Razr V3. It’s from (roughly) 2005 or 2006. I use it without a contract, with a T-Mobile SIM card, buying minutes when I need to. I like this phone design, and I don’t really want a smart phone or even a dumb phone with a touch screen, but mine is falling apart. I bought two allegedly new-old stock Motorola Razr V3 phones from an eBay seller. Unfortunately, they are counterfeits.
I have opened a case with eBay to return them, but I thought it might be useful to share pictures. Honestly, I wouldn’t have minded much if (1) they worked well (they don’t – the speaker for speakerphone mode doesn’t work, they don’t vibrate, and the audio is poor), and (2) they were really cheap (they weren’t that cheap – I paid $59.99 each).
Take a look at the pictures. The gray phone is the original. The gold one is the counterfeit. It’s very obvious when you just pick them up, open them, and try to work the buttons or open the battery compartment. The old phone opens smoothly and still feels solid. The new one grinds slightly and feels loose and flimsy.
Original: fit and finish is very clean. “M” logo button top center matches phone.
Fake: front cover edge misaligned, “M” logo is blue and looks strange, buttons are loose.
Original: you can read all the serial numbers (even though the picture is blurry, sorry).
Fake: numbers are cut off; missing some numbers.
Original: logo is laser etched right into the aluminum surface.
Fake: logo is painted.
Original: darker, glossy.
Fake: type is different, lighter gray, matte. Note the absence of Korean text!
Original: inside battery compartment cover. Note recycling warning, 3 clips to stabilize cover. Release mechanism still works after many years.
Fake: mechanism is extremely stiff and barely works, nothing molded on the inside.
Original battery hologram.
Fake battery hologram.
Original: still has a little rubber plug in that access hole after years of handling.
Fake: rubber plug stuck way out, fell out immediately with the gentlest handling, now it’s around here somewhere…
Back covers. Note the raised logo and carrier on the original (right). Ignore the missing dark glass over the display on the old phone, I broke that many years ago…
The cover of the manual.
The printing inside the manual.
Under the right lighting you can see that the battery compartment cover on the counterfeit phone is completely mismatched to the rest of the case. Wow! Crap-tastic!
