> This idea of "countries X and Y get worse QC products" when the prices are the same needs to die.
I can 100% testify this as true. Big manufacturers do "binning" on the final products just like chip fabs do.
If you see SKUs difference for 1st world and 2nd world countries without any spec difference, it's nearly 100% a case of such binning.
For example Dell diverts laptops with bad displays to Eastern Europe and low income Asian countries (with exception of China, China always gets best bins along with US market because they are afraid of backlash.)
In one Bangladeshi retail chain, every Dell device I saw had a dead pixel, or dust under bond layer. They were almost certainly specifically picking rejects.
Why so? MBA logic.
You definitely can not get so much bad panels if buy pretested panels (which is now standard.) They are picked 100% deliberately.
Defective panels are sold at great discounts, even for 4k and alike panels. So that makes a great temptation. You can near instantly get ~80usd off in case of a 4k panel out of a unit with $400 BOM.
This is why I'm afraid buying just any "premium" good in 3rd world countries. Cheaper devices are a bit safer in that regard as there is not as much incentive to do this with cheaper parts.
Ironically, low-end and mid-tier parts are often having superior reliability and defect rate exactly because there is no margin selling bad QC parts.
Related to binning, in the 1960s a lot of small piston airplanes used automotive parts (window latches and voltage regulators on my first airplane came from the Ford supply chain) because of the greater volume there.
Voltage regulator was literally the same part. Ford specified statistical process control and sampling inspection was good enough. Cessna demanded that every voltage regulator be tested.
Solution: run the line, test the percentage of parts Ford demanded, stamp the additionally inspected parts with an additional Cessna part number. At the end of the line, if more parts were tested than Cessna needed, so what? Put 'em in a Ford box and ship 'em.
Cessna and Ford each got what they needed, far more cheaply than they could have individually.
I am from a poorer European country, and I've never noticed that. But it's a commonly held belief. We're paying the same prices or higher, so I don't see how it makes sense to sell devices that don't pass QC for other countries :/
And you are often getting a worse bin or even completely different product under the same name for that! This is 100% true, and the big co will continue doing that for as long as they they think they can get away with that.
Samsung is notorious for that. Some of their devices with the same name can have up to 4 different sets of internals for sale in different countries.
As I said, it has not been my experience. But Chinese products like Huawei and Xiaomi are extremely popular due to lower price and similar quality, so if Samsung and other companies really do this, well they're giving up market share for no reason imo.
>> I am from a poorer European country, and I've never noticed that.
I am too. My distant acquaintance does business with a large retailer in the UK where they would buy returned products off the retailer at a much cheaper price (e.g. defects) and resell them in the Baltics.
An OEM may also source a part from multiple suppliers, of differing quality. As with the "Samsung Panel Lottery". So an OEM sending a model for review, might select one with parts from all the best suppliers, while the one you get off a shelf, is a dice roll. And as you say, a potentially binned roll.
Similarly, with a standard model on a same-day replacement plan, imperfections are likely to come back, with an added site visit cost. But the barrier to returning a customized model is higher. Creating another incentive for binning.
I can 100% testify this as true. Big manufacturers do "binning" on the final products just like chip fabs do.
If you see SKUs difference for 1st world and 2nd world countries without any spec difference, it's nearly 100% a case of such binning.
For example Dell diverts laptops with bad displays to Eastern Europe and low income Asian countries (with exception of China, China always gets best bins along with US market because they are afraid of backlash.)
In one Bangladeshi retail chain, every Dell device I saw had a dead pixel, or dust under bond layer. They were almost certainly specifically picking rejects.
Why so? MBA logic.
You definitely can not get so much bad panels if buy pretested panels (which is now standard.) They are picked 100% deliberately.
Defective panels are sold at great discounts, even for 4k and alike panels. So that makes a great temptation. You can near instantly get ~80usd off in case of a 4k panel out of a unit with $400 BOM.
This is why I'm afraid buying just any "premium" good in 3rd world countries. Cheaper devices are a bit safer in that regard as there is not as much incentive to do this with cheaper parts.
Ironically, low-end and mid-tier parts are often having superior reliability and defect rate exactly because there is no margin selling bad QC parts.