[jspock]

hello,

noob question - i have a new s3 mini which shows an O2 splash screen when it is turned on and off. thing is, i bought it in a country that doesn't have the O2 network and i bought it as sim free. both my sim cards work in it and neither are O2 sim cards.

is this abnormal? have i bought a dodgey/messed with phone?

thanks in advance for any thoughts on this...

[Kelly Burby]

hello,

noob question - i have a new s3 mini which shows an O2 splash screen when it is turned on and off. thing is, i bought it in a country that doesn't have the O2 network and i bought it as sim free. both my sim cards work in it and neither are O2 sim cards.

is this abnormal? have i bought a dodgey/messed with phone?

thanks in advance for any thoughts on this...

well, I don't think that getting a splash screen is abnormal sometimes, You will get splash screen just because your network provider will send you some flash messages. Have you tried reading what is written over the splash screen ??

[jspock]

well, I don't think that getting a splash screen is abnormal sometimes, You will get splash screen just because your network provider will send you some flash messages. Have you tried reading what is written over the splash screen ??

thanks for the reply, kelly. the splash screen i refer to is a full screen logo of the british network provider O2. i bought the phone as network/sim free. my curiosity/worry is that a sim free handset should logically not be in an way "branded" or promoting any particular network, especially one that doesn't operate in the country where i bought it. it seems to be working fine and fully functional and was bought from an official samsung dealer.

if the handset is tied to the O2 network and hasn't been messed with then how come both my sim cards work in it? if it is not tied to the O2 network then why the full screen O2 logo?

thanks again for any input...)

[GSDer]

Welcome to the forums!

if it is not tied to the O2 network then why the full screen O2 logo?

The GT-i9300 (the International variant) is a strange bird. It's not carrier-locked (you can use whichever carrier SIM you have) but there are different flavors of firmware for the various countries/carriers which allow things like the language, etc to be customized to the locale. And as you would see if you looked through the list of all of the firmware available for the GT-i9300, some carriers choose not to update to certain versions of firmware (or they're late to adopt it) depending on their support decisions.

So the phone that you have had a base O2 firmware loaded on it - there's nothing wrong with that (other than if the splash screen really annoys you). What country/carrier are you with?

Sent from my rooted, debloated, deodexed Sinclair ZX-80 running CM -0.001 using Tapatalk

[jspock]

GSDer - thanks.

i was worried i had bought a messed with phoned from a bunch of cowboys but after your reply and a similar explanation from other folks who also know much better than me i am feeling confident again.

i bought the handset in bulgaria and i am using it for a bg network plus vodaphone in the UK. it has been a joy to use so far, much nicer than my last phone.

thanks again for your useful and informative explanation, it's appreciated!

cheers!))