What You Get When You Buy a $40 iPhone In a Bar 211
Barence writes "How good — or bad — are fake iPhones? PC Pro blogger Steve Cassidy has a friend who paid £25 ($40) for an 'iPhone' in a bar, and he's got the photos and full lowdown of what's inside this not-so smartphone. The phone looks convincing enough from the outside, with a genuine-looking backplate, but things start to go wrong when you switch it on. What's a "Java" and "WLAN" App button doing on the screen? And how about that Internet Explorer icon? It's like you're handling an artefact from an alternate history, dropped in via a spacetime wormhole. It has dual SIM handling, too, and came with a bizarre auxiliary battery festooned with warnings about not pressing a button mounted on the front of the top-up device."
Awesome review (Score:5, Interesting)
Ashens did a review of one of these a while ago [youtube.com] (the menu does not look identical, but the resolution of the screen + font seems similar).
Sharing purely because I found it fairly amusing (especially the call dropping feature...)
Is it worse or better? (Score:2, Interesting)
A guy I work with has one of these he bought in China. If it has a removable battery and Java it might be a good thing to own.
Re:SEE!!! (Score:2, Interesting)
I doubt it will protect us really, afterall I have my own views on how well 'anti-counterfeiting' will work in countries that have repeatedly basically said "We'll do something about it!" then obviously not done anything.
As for moral of the story we can take another from it...
"There is a strong market for cheap thrill devices in bars!"
Sorry dude, it's fake (Score:3, Interesting)
I recently spotted a waiter with an iPhone in a third-world country so I went over to ask him about it. But it quickly became obvious that it was a fake. The sad thing is, I don't think the guy knew it. He said his mom paid $120 for it but it was basically unusable. You had to press real hard on the screen and the location calibration was way off (I'd played with another fake iPhone when I was in Laos and it was much better than this one). I showed him mine and the way it's supposed to work, with just a light flick of the finger.
Once I'd convinced him it was a fake, he asked me how much fakes like his go for in the U.S. I told him we don't have the fakes because you can get a new real one for $99 (with two-year contract). I ended up talking to the guy for a half-hour and it was a learning experience for both of us. But I felt bad for the guy, having spent several months' salary on a phone that barely worked (and possibly thinking that Apple makes such poor products)
Botnet (Score:5, Interesting)
for the money, you still have a better deal ... (Score:1, Interesting)
... than this guy [englishrussia.com].
And that "Asian lady lying on a bed who wriggles and moans suggestively when you rub your finger over her. " is exactly the Axe Feather game [gamedition.com]; wonder if they actually ported Flash to that phone.
Great timing (Score:2, Interesting)
fake blackberry, money well spent (Score:1, Interesting)
I recently bought a fake blackberry at the Official Beijing Fake Market for 40$, and I love it. (I think the case is similar to the Blackberry 8900)
Dual sim, QWERTY keyboard, good screen, fast (and stable) firmware, excellent battery time (thanks to 3700mAH battery), bluetooth, can be used as a webcam via USB, TV Tuner, and the list goes on! It even has a lot of options my previous 'real' phones did not have, like saving texts directly to MMC. (8gb supported).
Here's the kicker:
It's a full J2ME phone so I managed to install many apps, including Google Maps and Opera 5.2, which both work excellent.
It's excellent build quality, but if this one breaks I'm buying a "Chinese Copy Phone" again.
Re:Never fails to astound... (Score:5, Interesting)
So much time spent working out how to design, construct, and replicate just close enough to make the sale...
I doubt there was little if any NRE (Non-Reoccurring Engineering) costs involved in the construction of these iPhonies. The price alone strongly suggests the most likely explanation is that the Chinese manufactures making the genuine iPhone, are running their production lines on the side, without Apple's consent.
Apple has handed them the specifications and all the manufacturer has to do is build a few thousand more than what Apple orders. The bootleg manufacturers don't even have to pay for things like molds or automation setup costs. They then fill in any missing pieces (such as software or mute slider switches) with the cheapest thing they can get.
You probably would be surprised at how often this happens with consumer goods built in China.
Re:High Standards (Score:5, Interesting)
And it only costs $40?
The article fails to note if there are any bad traits to this phone...
I'd be afraid to (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd be scared to try to use this for anything but maybe passing some idle time playing games.
I mean, think about it. The OS and core apps are developed in China. I'd be afraid if I use Chinzilla to read my e-mail on this thing, even if by WiFi, it would be "phoning home" to the people who installed the software to let them know where I'm going, what I'm doing, and oh, here are his passwords. Good luck reporting or prosecuting that identity theft.
Re:Never fails to astound... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Better value per dollar (Score:3, Interesting)
Indeed, and this is nothing new - the Iphones have long being playing catchup to what's available in cheap bog standard phones (e.g., 3G, copy/paste, video recording, Java, MMS, ability to run apps from anywhere, tethering). Sure, it has better hardware (you'd hope so, for the price), but it's also had gaps that have taken Apple years to fix (and in some cases, they're still not available), and it is hardly the be all and end all of phones, nor is it clear why it deserves the "smartphone" label when other phones don't (all feature phones are smartphones these days, really, by the original meaning of the term).
Re:Never fails to astound... (Score:4, Interesting)
Dual sim means dual sim slots and two recievers so the phone can connect to two networks at once if you don't mind a shorter battery life.
It's a particularly Chinese innovation and not just a small tweak of an Apple design.