It is no secret that most people want to use the latest and most sophisticated phones available. To do this however, one must fork out a lot of cash which most times people don't have the luxury of. So rather than go for a brand new phone, people buy London used phones/ second hand ones.

What is sad however is that most of those who sell London used phones are desperados who will sell you fake phones rather than the original and those who sell second hand phones are selling because the phone has developed a fault. I've fallen twice for desperados and will therefore talk about the things you should look out for when getting a phone that is not brand new.

Let me start by saying when you intend to get a new phone, please go to the market with a phone in mind. Do not go with your money hoping to get a phone that is within the range of your cash; if for example you intend to buy infinix hot note, go to olx and check the price range of infinix hot notes there to have an idea of how much you will be shelling out so that when you get to the market and someone calls a ridiculously lower price for you, you know they are trying to sell you a fake phone. A while back, I intended to buy galaxy A7 so I went to the market without first finding out the features of the phone and how to spot an original one. What I ended up buying was an infinix phone in 'samsung' body. Immediately I got home, I checked the internal memory, low and behold the internal memory was about 3 MB I knew I  had gotten a cloned phone. I immediately went to YouTube, downloaded videos of the original A7 and my suspicion was confirmed. Lucky for me however, as a craze man I was able to make the guy refund me my cash.

As a phone freak, not long after that, I wanted to change the phone I later got and again I fell into another desperados' trap. Everything seemed legit when I bought the phone until I got home and discovered that the phone is locked to Sprint network in the U.S. Anyone who knows a lot about phones would know that the consequence of this is that I could only use 2g network on the phone as 3g will never turn on.

In order not to fall into a desperados' trap therefore, look out for the following when getting a London used phone. Whilst this list is not exhaustive, others can share their ideas.
1. Battery: Most times than not, people want to dispose of their phones because the battery is bad. Especially for phones that come with in-built batteries whose replacement can be difficult to find. I would advise therefore that when planning for a new phone, budget for a new battery too. Sometimes to detect if a battery is good, note the percentage the battery is while on. Switch off the phone and turn it back on, if the percentage is the same as that which it was on before you turned off the phone, the battery is most likely still good
2. Network mode: Check the network modes before you buy a London used phone. Do this by putting the network mode in 2g,3g and 4g (if available) and them turn on the data. If you put the phone on 3g for example and the data refuses to come on, the phone is a CDMA and gsm phone whose gsm bands are not supported in Nigeria.
3. Call, Music: Make a phone call and play music on the phone before you buy it. The owner might want to sell because the call quality of the phone is bad or he/she can't hear songs played on the phone. Also put an earpiece in the phone to make sure you can hear sounds from the earpiece
3. Special features: Phone brands sometimes have features which are exclusive to them. If for example you want to buy an HTC phone, most  HTC  phones have a feature called blinkfeed. You can can check by swiping to the left from the home to see if it has blinkfeed. This feature I doubt can be cloned. So if one of the features of the phone is blinkfeed and you can't find it on the phone, it's most likely a cloned phone. Samsung similarly has what is called Odin mode. Google how to get to Odin mode on a Samsung phone you intend to buy. If  the phone fails to enter Odin mode or the device model in Odin mode is different from what it's supposed to be, the phone is a fake one.

Picture quality: I can only speak for premium phones like Samsung, HTC and the rest under this heading. This is because the picture quality of most infinix, tecno and the likes is poor so you can hardly identify if it's a fake using this feature. However for Samsung, HTC and other premium phones, their picture quality is usually awesome. So if you want to get a Samsung phone for example and the picture quality is poor, it is obviously a cloned one.

This is the little I could come up with. Please add yours so people can be on the lookout. Let me emphasise again that you should make sure you know the features of the phone you want to buy before going to the market. Be informed about features like the internal and ram memory, whether the phone is a Qualcomm, mtk, exynos etc phone. There's an app called CPU-Z which tells you every feature of a phone. Go with a memory card which has the apk file of the app and install it on the phone. If you open the app and all the features it says matches those of the phone you intend to buy, congratulations my friend, you just got yourself a phone and not a liability.