Every month in India there are around a million mobile phone handsets are sold which are completely fake and this leads to around 5000 crore of business loss for handset manufacturers like Nokia, Sony & Samsung. You can just calculate the amount of total business loss if there are 10 lakh fake handsets sold every month. Not only about the loss in sales by these major handset companies but another problem would be use of these fake handsets by terrorists and making it hard for the crime department to track them down.

These Fake handsets completely have the same looks like the real ones but here are some of things which may/are missing.

1. Fake handsets dont have a IMEI number which a legit original handset would have and this can be easily tracked online if the IMEI number is real or not.
2. Fake Handsets are sold by most mobile phone dealers in order to make a higher profit margin hence its important to buy a handset from a company showroom like Nokia Priority Store.
3. These Duplicate mobile phone handsets dont have a Indian Cellular Association (ICA) hologram.
4. Most of these handsets are manufactured in china & taiwan and hence you can find the manufacturer’s details on the handset box.
5. The looks of these mobile phones are not really 100% perfect if you give a bird eye view because you can find easily that the quality of the handset’s exterior is of low quality and you can easily catch this if you are buying from a local mobile dealer.
6. Always ask for a Bill when you buy a handset whatever the price may be because generally in India most sellers write down the amount on a Quotation form rather than a real Bill with TIN Number because they cannot bill for duplicate products as they dont have any purchase bills.
7. Search for the battery number, since these are duplicate handsets you wont be able to find a charger number too.
8. The model name would have a very small typo in the brand part and generally illetrate people cannot really find this especially in countries like India where in the masses are also buying mobile phones to stay connected. Here are some examples like Nokia N95 would be Nokiea N95 with a price of just 5000Rs and a touch screen feature enabled in it unlike the original handset coming without a touch screen. Sony Ericsson K500 would be Sone Ericsson K500 and also into the excitement of buying a new handset people generally dont read these things carefully.
   
9. Another reason why you should avoid cheap handsets is that these emit out some radiations which are absorbed by the human body with the branded handsets complying with Specific absorption rate (SAR) and the fake handsets can be harmful with higher amounts of emmissions.
10. Avoid buying wholesale mobile phones which are generally advertised online wherein the sellers request you to buy bulk quantity of handsets and in return you get them at just 25% of the market price. This is only possible because these guys sell you all the fake handsets and you can find out once the handsets reach you and you end up with no other option than losing money. Not only they are dangerous because the battery can also get exploded in these cheap handsets. Avoid all the online wholesale handset stores like alibaba, ebay etc which are filled with lot of scammers.

These things are really important when buying a new mobile phone because you can get scammed easily in these mobile phone markets.