mobile

Hi, I live in China but am not Chinese and have inherited a 14mth old Note3 SM-N9008 from my wife, who is Chinese. Just wanted to clarify this point as a lot of other posters with an SM-N9008 have been shot down for having one instead of getting a model relative to where they live :)

OK, with that out of the way, I have no issues with voiding the warranty as it's gone anyway (14 mth old).

My key question is after reading the "how-to-change-csc-in-samsung-galaxy-phones" (sorry cannot include the offsite link being new here) topic, and perhaps my understanding is wrong and so please correct me if I am, if I change the PDA, PHONE and CSC codes to match correctly to another locale NOT China (eg UK), then I am a) basically changing my 9008 to a 9005 in principle & b) my 9008 will accept ROM's for a 9005 and work fine.

Or is this 'trick' of manipulating these codes to give a new locale only for the purpose of if you have a 9005 in Chile which has not uploaded a new Stock ROM but say Spain has, I make my 9005 look like it is now from Spain and will therefore be able to get the new 9005 Stock ROM?

I have only ever rooted and applied another Stock ROM to one other mobile device before, about 2 years or more ago, which was a Chinese model of the Note 10.1 and it's worked perfectly fine in all that time on the Intl Stock ROM - except for updates online which I don't do (I do manual app updates where required) because the updates give me the Chinese version due to the CSC etc not being changed and so thinking I am Chinese.

Has anyone tried this before at all? Changing the PDA, PHONE and CSC codes from one model to anothers so as to have access to other Stock ROM's in your preferred language and without the locale's bloatware, as well as being able to have appz like Intl google play etc (which cannot be included in any 9008 Stock ROM)?

I've looked at detailed specs for both the 9008 and the 9005 models and they seem exactly the same, just the PDA, PHONE and CSC codes make each different.

If anyone has, please can they help tell me the process steps I need to follow (such as do I root 1st and then change the codes, or change the codes 1st and then root?

I do hope someone can give me some positive feedback please. Thanks in anticipation for any help you can offer me.