****The Official Note III Thread****

lmfy2k said:
looking good on the price front

lots of unhappy customers on amazon reviews though lol
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regarding region locking - meh! :D

seems like a lot of spam ones from the same person.


Man I wonder how much more the price will fluctuate over the next week.
 
Re knox and the locked bootloader

Chainfire
Shared publicly - 09:45

More on KNOX warranty void

Bad news everyone! I've been hearing more from people in places associated with Samsung, and it is becoming more likely that this KNOX status is indeed an eFuse. I might talk to some Samsung guys myself this weekend, if there's anything interesting about that, I'll let you know.

Worse than that, I've also been hearing that service center instructions are indeed that devices with this status tripped will not receive any warranty repairs. (Of course, the action they take may still depend on the service center). Their excuse is that the hardware is damaged by the owner. Seems Samsung is catching up in scumbaggery to HTC, who years ago attributed my HTC Diamond's screen damage (digitizer detached) to the installation of HSPL :)

To anyone in the know it is obvious that this doesn't really fly, and the eFuse blowing (is this the hardware damage?) is intentionally done by the bootloader when unsigned software is loaded. One could even argue against the legality of that under EU regulations.

Anyway, of course there's that EU regulation (1999/44/CE) that is generally interpreted so that rooting/flashing may not break hardware warranty. As I've said again and again, this may be true, and you may be legally entitled to free repairs but this doesn't necessarily mean they'll actually repair your device.

Warranty needs to be provided by the seller, not by the manufacturer. The shop will usually depend on the manufacturer's warranty, though that's really none of your business or concern - your deal is with the seller. The shop will send you (or your device) to a service center, which may not be OEM operated or owned (but licensed instead) and are furthermore under no obligation whatsoever to repair your device if they don't want to. And if their instructions say to not repair in case X, then they will not, as the OEM will not reimburse them for the parts.

The shop will just tell you that the OEM says your breakage isn't covered by the warranty, and that will be that. You will have to slap said shop around a bit with EU regulations, and possibly take them to court before they will repair/replace your device. Even if you take them to court, and if you win (I've not seen or heard from such a case winning yet), you'd just be hurting the shop, it has no effect on the OEM, and you've probably spent a lot more time and money than you would've just buying a new device.

Only the OEM wins in this scenario, which is pretty sad, really.

Of course, I am not a lawyer, so take all this with a grain of salt.
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Prices on Amazon usually go up and down like a yo-yo. It could go upto £600 in a few seconds and you might have to wait weeks before it drops below £581 again.
 
El1te said:
Just got my Note 3 from Three.

£34 p/m - 500 minutes, 5000 texts, unlimited data.

I managed to get them to dismiss the upfront handset cost of £99 so that was great. Just going to go about setting it up now.

Any pointers guys? How are you finding your phones so far?
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Were you upgrading? Also did you do this instore? I haven't had any luck on the phone (not upgrading, new user).
 
JAMAL said:
Oh dear! £600 and no warranty, good luck with that!!
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Matter of time before someone figures out a way to reverse the trip but if worst comes to worst then there's always phone insurance. It's unfair practice to decline warranty repair on a hardware fault when rooting doesn't damage the hardware.
 
mrk said:
Matter of time before someone figures out a way to reverse the trip but if worst comes to worst then there's always phone insurance. It's unfair practice to decline warranty repair on a hardware fault when rooting doesn't damage the hardware.
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Claim for repair? or commit fraud saying its stolen/lost? and this costs extra every month.

Microsoft did the same with the xbox, i guess there's nothing you can do unless someone finds a way of not blowing the fuses, i certainly wouldn't be rooting before that!
 
Well if the phone needs repair it's broken so you make a claim and state it's broken? It costs £7 a month or free depending on your bank.
 
mrk said:
Matter of time before someone figures out a way to reverse the trip but if worst comes to worst then there's always phone insurance. It's unfair practice to decline warranty repair on a hardware fault when rooting doesn't damage the hardware.
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How do you propose reversing an eFuse? It's physical damage to an inaccessible and tiny (likely not even visible to the naked eye) component.
 
It's not actual physical damage, CF says there might be a chance of re-writing it but the chances are slim right now. Combined efforts have led to success in the past so I still think it's a matter of time. Maybe the worst case scenario is that the counter will merely be masked so if a service centre simply goes into the bootloader mode the displayed trigger will be 0x0 I guess. Who knows :p

The following devices implement efuse tech: S4, S3, Note 3, Note 2, and S4 min. Just so happens Note 3 has it enabled out of the box.
 
mrk said:
It's not actual physical damage, CF says there might be a chance of re-writing it but the chances are slim right now. Combined efforts have led to success in the past so I still think it's a matter of time. Maybe the worst case scenario is that the counter will merely be masked so if a service centre simply goes into the bootloader mode the displayed trigger will be 0x0 I guess. Who knows :p

The following devices implement efuse tech: S4, S3, Note 3, Note 2, and S4 min. Just so happens Note 3 has it enabled out of the box.
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Once an eFuse is blown you're not reversing it, the best you can hope for is a way of not triggering it in the first place. If your fuse is blown already that's your warranty out the window!
 
mrk - found any nice cases for this bad boy yet?

I'm tempted to get the Spigen Neo Hybrid in metal slate, had one for my S4 and loved it, though I might just wait for a few more cases to become available and see what's on offer. Not really liking the S-View with the leather design.
 
I haven't really bothered to research into cases I have to say. The Spigen is nice on the S4 so will no doubt be nice on the Note but I don't think I'll bother with them.

Kreeeee said:
Once an eFuse is blown you're not reversing it, the best you can hope for is a way of not triggering it in the first place. If your fuse is blown already that's your warranty out the window!
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Happy to eat my words but I'm still gonna say that I reckon it will be sorted in due course!
 
Kreeeee said:
Once an eFuse is blown you're not reversing it, the best you can hope for is a way of not triggering it in the first place. If your fuse is blown already that's your warranty out the window!
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That's exactly it, they can't reverse the e-fuse flag once it's set. They've tried with low level flashing via JTAG and once its gone its gone. And it is actual physical damage, a trace (or more likely a fuseset) somewhere gets some current pushed through it, blows and open circuits. Same deal with xbox 360 dash updates. For many years the devs have tried and never found any way to reverse the damage. Stands to reason, knox has been developed to be a secure system in partnership with the NSA. Don't hold your breath for a work around.

And as an aside, Samsung are not the only ones using these to secure bootloaders, see the Motorola ATRIX

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