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by biktor_gj
2200 days ago
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Well, probably this was the result of some corruption in a parameter in the flash. On the early days of the Samsung Galaxy phones if you broke part of the efs partition the modem couldn't read the IMEI and would fall back to a generic one. This looks quite the same Though with 13000 devices affected either it was a problem in manufacturing or someone in the Service Center was not doing the job too well... |
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Hard to imagine for me how this could have happened. I don't know precisely how IMEIs are provisioned or stored, but I suspect they can be changed in software.
Trying to sell a used phone on line is tricky. Legitimate buyers may want the IMEI to check it's not a reported stolen phone. Illegitimate buyers may want a known good one to replace one on a reported stolen phone.
Carriers can blacklist IMEIs from their network (that's a threat they use for certification; they want to make sure families of devices are well behaved).
One of my phones was blacklisted from a carrier a few years ago. They said it was reported stolen. I brought them the receipt; I bought it new in box. They said it was reported stolen by a carrier in a foreign country. I'd been there, maybe ten years earlier, and never with that phone. The local carrier I was a customer of said they couldn't remove the block, since it was reported stolen by a foreign carrier. Seems fishy how carriers work together to ban IMEIs but do nothing to verify reports of stolen devices.
I'm not sure carriers would ban this IMEI if it's tied to 13.5k phones, but I'm sure they're not happy.