Probably, the best deals on Samsung Galaxy phones like the upcoming Note 9 will be on eBay several months after on international models. Now, if you want to get the best bundle promotions you will want to go with a carrier that gives you the promotion such as AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, or Verizon. Just double-check samsungpromotions.com to see if your carrier is supported or not. Sometimes these free bundles/promotions are worth well over $300-400 including a 1-year subscription to Netflix.
For international models, you will want to grab the models usually ending in “F” or “SM-N960F”, or also the “F/DS” which is “SM-N960F/DS” but fully compatible with regular “F” just has dual-SIM capability. Now, these “international” phones are GSM ONLY, meaning you can use it with GSM networks like AT&T or T-Mobile but not CDMA networks like Sprint or Verizon. For Sprint or Verizon, you can grab the unlocked U.S. models also which are unlocked GSM/CDMA hybrid phones.
For rooting, the international models will have unlocked bootloaders, these usually are Exynos models but the Chinese Snapdragon also has unlocked bootloader. All U.S. models including unlocked U.S. models will have locked bootloaders so you will be stuck without root permanently.
With a lot of different options out there, I have seen prices on phones best on ebay after about 3 months, you will see a 10-25% drop in price. These do NOT come with warranty but bootloader is fully unlocked so you can root and install custom ROMs. While most people don’t think of root as something required, I see it so you can use a device for much longer time by updating with a custom ROM. For that, the U.S. Snapdragon models unfortunately locked.
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