On 7/10/2012 11:56 PM, Russell Coker wrote:
On Sun, 7 Oct 2012, Andrew McGlashan <andrew.mcglashan@affinityvision.com.au>
I've been there, done that, right now I just want stock software from Samsung, no network branding, no other bloatware.
That's nice for you. Jason wants root access and therefore needs to flash it.
Rooting phones is over rated and it also adds risk. I know you have a use case for it (as per one of the LUV meetings for backup purposes), but I don't keep anything on my phone that isn't otherwise backed up elsewhere. Even if you don't root the phone and you open up USB debug mode (adb), then you are seriously at risk with your phone even with an otherwise secure lock screen. http://hak5.org/episodes/hak5-1205 And Kos has the app in the app store too, for what it's worth, but it isn't called p2padb there. The following search finds it though: https://play.google.com/store/search?q=p2padb
Perhaps try: http://www.thinkofus.com.au/Samsung-i9300-Galaxy-S-III-16GB-S3-p/7186.htm
That is AU stock with 24 month Samsung warranty, a little more than $499 but not that much more.
When $71 is defined as "a little" then that's the case.
It's less than $71 when you take into account GST as most people would have to, even if it doesn't apply to you Russell. Plus you do get the second year of warranty from Samsung AU (for what it is really worth).
Kogan has $499 with 12 month warranty, 3 years add $79 or 5 years add $109
So far in over 10 years of owning mobile phones and often having more than one phone for my personal use as well as being the main support person for all my close relatives I've only had one phone fail. That one phone is running CyanogenMod which combined with the unusual way I received it (Optus gave it to a client for free who then gave it to me) means that it's not even worth asking about warranty support.
So out of 20+ phones only one had a problem, that's less than a 5% fault rate. Paying 14% extra to cover the 5% chance of failure is bad value even if you aren't going to do something to void the warranty. As a general rule self- insurance is always better value if you can afford the worst case scenario - avoiding morale jeopardy alone assures that.
Perhaps you've been lucky, but using that logic, do you take out car insurance at all, perhaps not? It might similarly payout to not take car insurance.... but YMMV.
Now, another complaint about Kogan is that you are buying from Kogan HK and therefore there is no tax invoice so you cannot claim GST on the purchase either!
Yes, you can get ~12% back if you are registered for GST. That would almost make the expensive local company you cited become competitive with Kogan for buyers who are registered for GST. I'm not registered for GST so this isn't a problem for me.
It's not expensive for proper AU stock, that's the point. The non-AU stock is cheap for a reason and it doesn't always work out, but sure, sometimes it does work out. Quad band GSM and quad band 3G are very common on new phones; the same frequencies used by all AU networks. Kogan can easily claim it works with all Australian networks, to a point, it does on the GSM frequencies used by every telco here. It does for the 3G networks too -- both GSM and 3G are using frequencies in AU that are all covered by the radios built-in to most newer phones these days. The difference comes when you need 4G (LTE) now..... and that has about 23 frequencies world wide, not sure how many frequencies we'll end up with, but right now I think LTE is all done over 1800MHz but I'm not sure on that. In time we'll have LTE over the frequencies currently used by the analogue TV networks.... that will be a reason to buy a new phone (maybe). Also note that whilst 2100MHz has been used by Telstra for 3G, they will (if they haven't already), only use that for LTE or Next-G. Other GSM network frequencies are being re-purposed by Optus (and I'm sure others) to use 3G instead of GSM as more and more people have phones that support 3G, the support for GSM will be much less required. Cheers A.