I love using the most bleeding-edge tech and I have spent all my life doing the best I can to get my hands on the most advanced toys. But we all know that this can fast become a very expensive hobby and to still be able to manage this, there are some corners I personally cut. I buy my smartphones second-hand just like 26.4% of Zimbabweans. So far my success rate has been really great but I recently had the biggest inconvenience as a result of buying a second-hand phone.
A rogue Huawei ID locked me out
In April of 2022, I bought a Huawei Mate 40 Pro. The usual swap and top deals, I traded in my P30 Pro and topped up a bit of cash. What I did not do, which is something that I usually do routinely when I buy a new phone is ensure I run a factory reset and begin setting it up from scratch so that I am sure the previous owner’s accounts are not still logged in.
A year later I decided to run a factory reset, the first time since I bought it. Then during setup, I was asked to verify my ID but the problem was the ID I needed to verify was not mine. In fact, it was linked to a South African number. Which was a very big problem. There were workarounds to reset this Huawei ID so I can log in but this method won’t work if security patches are up to date. And mine were VERY up to date. Shout out to Huawei’s smartphones for being virtually uncrackable.
The right way to do it
Buy it from a trusted seller
Definitely buy from a place you trust. A place you can trust will normally take down your details, the details of the old phone you are trading in, and the details of the new phone you are getting. Brand new or second-hand. They will issue a receipt and offer you some form of warranty for your device. Others will even have some stickers on the phone with the name of their shop and contact number.
Check for physical defects
If it is a second-hand phone, try and inspect it as thoroughly as possible for any physical defects. Check there is nothing loose that might show you any sign of the phone having been opened before. Usually, it is either the back cover or the screen.
Turn it on and push some buttons
Make sure it turns on. My first Harare deals experience got me buying a phone with a dead screen after I was told that the battery is dead and that it just needed to be charged. Definitely a story for another day. So turn it on and go through the usual stuff. Check if the camera is good, if it’s charging if the touch screen is working properly, and make a call to test the earpiece, loudspeaker, and mics.
Factory reset. Start fresh
If you are happy with what you see, do the final and most important thing. Run a factory reset and set the phone up from scratch. This is done for 2 main reasons. The first is to be sure it does not have a Google account, Apple ID, or Huawei ID on it from the previous owner that could otherwise lock you out like what happened to me.
The second reason is that you don’t know what settings and apps the previous owner had on the phone and these may have some features active on the phone that you don’t want to have active or it will have some features of the phone disabled that you would otherwise prefer to be enabled. Maybe there is a harmful virus on it or some sort of malware that can be eliminated by a simple factory reset.
The other is, whenever you factory reset a phone, it will take you through a process that makes it super easy to get the phone set up just the way you like it. It will also show you some of the unique features the phone has that you could love and a tutorial on how best to use it. Something that is especially useful when you are jumping from one brand to a different one.
Don’t lose that receipt!
Then lastly. Keep the receipt for at least as long as the warranty of the smartphone so that if it develops any issues within the warranty period, you can return it for repair or replacement.
That said. If you can afford to buy a brand new phone, I would recommend you do so from certified retailers for those brands just so that you are guaranteed that the features on these devices will work perfectly on Zimbabwean networks. If you really must buy preowned, Mi Store Zimbabwe offers that service for Xiaomi and Redmi devices bought from them. The same goes for Solution Centre for those using Apple products. Let me know of your experiences buying second-hand smartphones.
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