Have you ever been duped into thinking the cellphone you are purchasing is genuine?

China is home to a booming, unregulated industry in knock-off mobile phones that is hurting legal handset makers even as it spawns innovation. The low-price handsets have become popular enough to inspire a nickname, shanzhai, which translates as “bandit” and includes any phone not licensed for sale by regulatory authorities. Included in the category are look-alike versions of well-known smartphones like the iPhone and the Nokia N97, sometimes so close in appearance to the original handsets that the two can be hard to distinguish.

But despite their resemblance, the knock-off phones sometimes lack functions found in the original handsets and can come with malware pre-installed or have safety hazards like exploding batteries (it dies after 6-7 months), and sound is horrible among others. Chinese counterfeits may be cheap but in the long run they are not worthy purchasing..

This are easy steps you can take to ensure what you purchase is genuine.

The Identification number or IMEI

A genuine phone has an identification number known as IMEI which should be 15 digits only. Dial *#06# to check the IMEI number of your phone
Spelling of the model name
Fake phones or china pones as commonly known in Kenya are written with letters that almost spell the real names. The trick usually is replacing of some letters in the name to make the difference unnoticeable. For instance Samsvng, Nokla etc. Although they may have similar names  with original ones so you have to follow all the tips to help you distinguish
Internet settings
Fake phones do not accept data or internet settings remotely. Even if they do, they lose them after a while.
Accessing USSD commands
Some phones will also fail to execute USSD commands (these are the ones that start or end with * or #