Beware of the Fake Nokia N97

The Nokia N97. Or is it?

The N97 is officially available today at Nokia Flagship stores in the USA. Great news, but you’ll have to pay retail - $700 bucks to be exact. Or, you could do the next best thing and preorder it from Amazon for $603.99. But you’ll have to wait until June 30th, when the phone starts shipping.

And then…you might be tempted to buy an N97 from eBay.

First, a quick quiz: what’s real and what’s fake?

If you said all of them, sorry, you automatically lose. The answers are: A and D are the real N97s, B and C are fakes from actual eBay listings.

There are a couple of telltale signs that can give away a fakie N97. These are (click on thumbnail images to see full picture):

	A screen that’s not quite as widescreen as it should be (Exhibit A vs. B) - notice that the left side of the screen on the fake N97. Printed logo instead of etched (see A, B, C - it’s a little hard to make out the etching on D). Fairly self-explanatory. No light sensor (very noticeable in A vs. B). The real thing has one to the right of the videoconferencing camera.
	No silver power button - The fake N97 in Exhibit C has a power button that’s the same color as the finish. No 3.5mm jack recess - You may notice a slight recess for the 3.5 mm jack in the genuine handset.
	Keyboard key colors (B vs. D) - the letters should be grayish and the function keys should be blue. You can ignore Exhibit A, as this is a prototype model so it looks a little strange. Certainly looks like the fakes were designed after this one.

Obvious Stuff

Always read the complete auction description. A lot of fake N97 auctions display the bands as “Triband 900/1800/1900” when the phone is quite obviously quad-band (850/900/1800/1900). Also, stay as far away as humanly possible from auctions that display “Chinese model” or refer to anything “Chinese” in the description. There are no Chinese N97 models. They are fake. And avoid any N97 auctions that say the phone features TransFlash memory, of all things.

Remember: if it looks too good to be true, well, it probably is.

(pictures above taken from various sources: A - Gizmodo, D - GSMArena, B/C - random ebay auctions)

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