Can anyone confirm clone Z10s being issued as "refurbished"?

One member from Vietnam (vutranloc) suggested that there are a glut of fake/cloned Z10s from China that could be a possible explanation to the weird blue LED / no Welcome Wizard on certain refurbished units provided by some carriers (Verizon in the US, T-Mobile & O2 here in the UK).

See this thread - post #6:
http://forums.crackberry.com/blackbe...bootup-964662/

I've Googled fake Z10s but all I could find was a Chinese lookalike that ran Android.

I personally find the concept that our carriers may be sending out sub-standard replacements a very worrying prospect and I hope this is not the case, but so far no-one seems to be offering any explanation as to why some refurbs are behaving so differently.

Does anyone else know anything about this?

I doubt this.

Yeah, I don't think a fake Z10 would even boot.

If it's a fake you could see right away it will be used android software there are no fakes running BlackBerry software

Posted via the awesome power of BlackBerry 10 on one of my lovely devices probably my beautiful beast called Z30 or my great Q10 or my lovely Z10

I am fairly certain that BB would never stand for such practices. They would sue although with China potentially involved, who knows how troublesome a law suit would be.

I have the same problem, and I doubt it's a refurbished phone. It's my original T-Mobile Z-10/STL100-3 Mexico-6. It came in the mail from T-Mobile in a shrink wrapped box with factory tape on the phone box. It has always booted with a blue LED until the Hub finishes loading, and never a startup/setup screen. I've never had any other problems with the phone.

If there's something different, then I suspect either a string of defective units, or BlackBerry made a change. I'm beginning to wonder about the carrier installed splash screen. Maybe it is written to space that these leaks use. I have to wonder why 634 works OK. I don't have a T-Mobile splash screen on boot up, but when I go back to 10.2.2, it's there. Something is up with the way these leaks are written to the phone. I think BlackBerry must know about it, and will change things in the final release.

I've searched the Internet for any answers. I don't believe my phone is defective or refurbished. I can't explain the lack of setup screen on first boot.

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