Why is the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 international version cheaper

[Android Central Question]

Never bought a phone online before and i'm finding it bit weird. I'm in the UK it retails here (on amazon) at 900+. However the international version on amazon is 700+ and others are 600+.

Why is this? Do international phones work in the UK (ie. phone providers same CPU etc..)?

 

[j_hansen]

Grey/parallel import ones or whatever it is called, bought my first note 8 from amazon UK and it came up in Italian when first powered on but absolutely no issues and Samsung registered it for the 2 year warranty no problem

 

[anon(3641385)]

When you buy from another country I thought the dealer had to put a sim in and use the phone for x period, or something, before it was able to be used in another country.

Fairly sure the clove site said something about that.

 

[Dragonaf]

So did it fix itself and turn back into english?

 

[Mooncatt]

A lot of factors go into pricing. For example, carrier versions may be more expensive due to proprietary apps and such they develop and put on the phones.

Importing on the grey market often means no warranty either. In the U.S, we have pretty strong warranty regulations that other countries don't have. So many of our products are more expensive to offset the costs of warranty repairs. When importing cheaper grey market devices, they usually do not have a warranty in the source country and thus don't have one here. You may be seeing a similar situation in your country.

 

[j_hansen]

When you buy from another country I thought the dealer had to put a sim in and use the phone for x period, or something, before it was able to be used in another country.

Fairly sure the clove site said something about that. ??????

That's the region lock you're thinking about, I'm in EU as well so not an issue

 

[j_hansen]

So did it fix itself and turn back into english?

Yes I pressed whatever I thought was OK and it did another little dance detecting my sim and setup was now in english

 

[anon(3641385)]

So did it fix itself and turn back into english?

That's a language setting