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."
Never fails to astound... (Score:5, Insightful)
You know I'm almost never ceasing to be amazed by the effort and dedication of people who bootleg.
So much hard work. So much time spent working out how to design, construct, and replicate just close enough to make the sale and in some places even make a 'moderately' working replica.
If only the bootleggers could be recruited to actually create and sell your product!
On another thought you have to wonder on a component standpoint some of the bootleggers/replicators (wow sounds like I'm talking about some robot race) throw it all together with all that effort and sell it so cheap when a suitably crappy real version can cost quadruple or more!
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The same could be said of all sophisticated criminals. For those that run large bot nets. Why so much effort into a crime? If you put the same effort into releasing good software you could make a very very good living.
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You could make a "very good" living being honest or make a fucking butt ton of money being dishonest.
Re:Never fails to astound... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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I doubt that very much. The dual sim tells me it's not at all Apple electronics and most likely made by SCI. Sci makes cheap knockoffs using an OS they skin to make the front screen look like whatever OS they are mimicking. Slap an Apple look alike case and home screen and it's an iphone. Slap a t mobile g1 case on it and it's Android.
I actually own one. I needed a cheap phone fast and their G1 knockoff was cheaper than even low end phones around here. It wasn't bad for the price but I wish they woul
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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.
Re:Never fails to astound... (Score:5, Informative)
Its called the 3rd shift. You have Chinese factories that just keep the assembly line running for a third unoffical shift. The local assembler, nor the US company really cares enough to stop them. Not to mention the incentives from the under the table dealings.
Why doesn't the US company stop them? Cause the markets that they really care about and make profit in (US and Europe) have heavy enough disincentives to make bootlegging insignificant in comparison to the costs of further stopping them. Plus, the majority of the bootlegging sector can't or won't afford your product anyway. They aren't a customer to begin with, so why stop them from subsidizing your purchasing costs to the 3 shift vendor.
Now when politics hits the fan or someone gets greedy under the table, all Ell breaks loose.... for a week and then freezes over again. As to address gmack's post further down, most mass produced hardware is like lego blocks. You just need a smart enough individual in electrical engineering to put things together in the right order (trust me, that's not a scarcity in most of the world). So its not too hard to put an extra solid disk chip, sim reader, flash light, or even add a FM component when you are already the assembler who has access to the _expensive_ specs, the assemblers, AND the manufactures behind them. Not to mention, most hardware will automatically support the additional stuff as its already built in, but for high, profitable yield ratios, those features are disabled or not used (See AMD Phenom II X series for an excellent example). This is why the third shift stuff is such a hit or miss, its doesn't have proper QC to minimize the defects. If they did, it would be VERY expensive... more so than the original.
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Seriously? Do you think these are comparable? One is a manufacturing situation in which there are scaled cost advantages in overlooking excess production that doesn't affect your sales market. The other is almost purely Intellectual Property in which excess production and circulation has no advantages and often does creep into your (otherwise) target market.
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Re:Coming to a Home Depot lot near you... (Score:4, Insightful)
The guy got a functioning touchscreen smartphonefor £25. Counterfeit or not, it's hard to call that a ripoff IMHO.
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the new version (Score:5, Funny)
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As a user of the real iPhoney [marketcircle.com] I'm offended you would say that.
What You Get When You Buy a $40 iPhone In a Bar (Score:5, Funny)
Arrested?
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Why? How is buying something in a bar different from buying it off (say) craigslist?
Re: What You Get When You Buy a $40 iPhone In a Ba (Score:5, Funny)
MichaelSmith, age 5: "But what was the underlying cause? Was he in search of food? Was he being pursued by a predator? Was there a potential mate on the other side of the road?!?"
MichaelSmith, age 10: "Technically they never found any parts of the astronauts washed up on the beach, which makes that a single entendre!!"
MichaelSmith, age 15: "All mammal meat is RED!! Plus the anatomies are completely different. OJ wouldn't necessarily be any better at cutting a turkey than anyone else just because he allegedly murdered someone."
MichaelSmith, present day: "That doesn't even make sense! There were eight years between the Challenger disaster and the OJ Simpson trial, and supposedly I only aged FIVE years?!?!"
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High Standards (Score:5, Funny)
So Apple would not allow this, but we can have like 100 fart apps? That's pretty messed up.
Re:High Standards (Score:5, Funny)
So its a cheap softcore porn device? I could see a market for this thing in bars everywhere!
so in other words (Score:5, Funny)
This thing is far more useful than an iPhone!
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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...
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.
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.
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They are standard fare from DealExtreme [dealextreme.com]. I don't know why this is even news.
Actually some of the phones they have look pretty decent. I wouldn't mind getting my hands on one of the watch phones that they sell.
Re:Ya, but (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if it doesn't, that's almost as good as the phone in an iPhone.
SEE!!! (Score:2)
This is exactly what the new 'Anti-counterfeiting Treaty' currently being negotiated in secret is meant to protect us from!
Moral of this story - Don't buy a smart phone after you've been drinking all night and especially not one from said bar! I mean, come-on, everyone knows bars don't sell phones they sell hookers and blow!
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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!"
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Moral of this story - Don't buy a smart phone after you've been drinking all night and especially not one from said bar!
I seriously thought, for a moment or two, you said "especially not one from the salad bar!"
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Wooooooooosh
Better value per dollar (Score:5, Insightful)
It's even better than the iPhone:
- two SIMs
- user-changeable battery
- unlocked
but here's my favorite:
- "drag and drop files through USB port of computer (No Software Required)"
No mandatory iTunes. Eat that, Steve!
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Strange the person may've bought an actual semi useful thing..once they get some of the junk off of it!
Perhaps the bootleggers in this example have actually produced something with some degree of quality/usefulness that surpasses the real one...well at least to the Apple haters out there of course.
Re:Better value per dollar (Score:4, Insightful)
It actually seems to be a very useful device, sold dirt cheap only because the manufacturer couldn't get over the guilt that they're selling counterfeiting iPhone. Now, I only wish they would design and market a legitimate brand to compete with Apple.
Re:Better value per dollar (Score:5, Informative)
I can speak from experience that Chinese no-name dual-SIM touchscreen phones are way better than their price point and reputation would suggest.
600RMB (~60 EUR) would get you a touchscreen phone from ChangHong with integrated stylus and character recognition (Chinese and Latin, but it's error prone), high resolution display (480*x?), two SIMs, music player, straight mini USB interface, driverless USB mass storage interface, 8GB integrated, up to 32gb via SDHC micro and a 2.5Mpixel camera. And the phone can be set to English (with some Engrish in the mix of course). Bluetooth yes, but no 3G, no WiFi.
It looks like this (I don't know if that is the model I played with, it looks only vaguely similar)
http://img.alibaba.com/photo/263983686/ChangHong-F8-mobile-phone.jpg [alibaba.com]
An interesting feature is text-to-speech for names stored in the address book: it actually read the name of a caller in understandable English. Caller not in the adressbook with CLIP enabled had their numbers spelled aloud. In Chinese only of course :)
One feature I was very content with is the battery time: it has a 4000mAh battery - NiMH, not Li-Ion but still. A solid two weeks of battery power with medium amounts of talking time in between is more than impressive. Within the 600 RMB package was a second identical battery, a charging station, a 5V USB charger that could be substituted with any other 5V USB charger that exists. That way, you could always keep one battery charged and switch as soon as the other battery got low. Memory effect shmemory effect - you'll get a brandnew original battery for 5 EUR, so it's no problem charging the thing whenever you need to. Maybe Li-Ion is overrated and the situation where a memory effect would be noticeable isn't that common. I mean, who recharges their phone daily?
Measured in value-per-dollar, this thing was great. Downsides and eventual deal-breakers were some Engrish remains in the menu but the worst was some menus that were in Chinese only, no translation available. The games for example, but also some SMS sub-menus.
When (not if!) ChangHong gets around to translate the firmware with all submenus and iron out the last kinks, this will devastate the lower end cellphone market.
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touchscreen phone from ChangHong with integrated stylus and character recognition (Chinese and Latin, but it's error prone)
Who sends text messages in Latin these days? The Pope?
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This comment is using Latin characters. Thanks for asking.
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Utor Latin cotidie, vos frigus agrestis.
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In english Slashdot, latin fatur vos!
Lame (Score:2)
600RMB (~60 EUR) would get you a touchscreen phone from ChangHong with integrated stylus and character recognition (Chinese and Latin, but it's error prone), high resolution display (480*x?), two SIMs, music player, straight mini USB interface, driverless USB mass storage interface, 8GB integrated, up to 32gb via SDHC micro and a 2.5Mpixel camera. And the phone can be set to English (with some Engrish in the mix of course). Bluetooth yes, but no 3G, no WiFi.
Hmm, so it has less space than a Nomad, and no wireless...
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character recognition (Chinese and Latin, but it's error prone)
And the phone can be set to English (with some Engrish in the mix of course).
Caller not in the adressbook with CLIP enabled had their numbers spelled aloud. In Chinese only of course
Downsides and eventual deal-breakers were some Engrish remains in the menu but the worst was some menus that were in Chinese only, no translation availa
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Better than a Zune at least.
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I'm sure they have, just much much less than NiCd. But why don't most phones have NiMH batteries? NiMHs are dirt cheap, really. The Changhong phone I had was 2.5cm thick. Not iPhone-class, of course, but not bulky either. I'm sure there are a lot of people and professions out there that could really use a 4000mAh battery with 2 weeks of standby time.
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Bah, scratch that, I measured it again, it is not 2.5cm but 1.8cm, very similar to a Sony Ericsson W800.
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> NiMH doesn't really have a memory effect. That's NiCad you're thinking of.
Sort of... if you egregiously abuse a NiMH battery by repeatedly recharging it when it's not even halfway discharged, it will eventually start to ACT like a NiCd battery with memory damage. The difference is, unlike NiCd, you can undo almost all of the damage by discharging it to the point where the phone shuts down, fully charging it back up, and repeating a few more times. With NiCd, memory effect is more or less irreversible a
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You may disbelieve it because it's from Wikipedia, but here goes...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel-cadmium_battery#Memory_and_lazy_battery_effects [wikipedia.org]
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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 p
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)
Re:Sorry dude, it's fake (Score:5, Insightful)
How much is "$99 (with a two year contract)"?
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Re:Sorry dude, it's fake (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that I want to dispute your overall point of that's what you're counting, but a contract that binds you to another $1700 outlay over 2 years isn't much of a "technicality".
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Should have put quotes, it was meant as sarcasm. Personally, I think such lock-in contracts are just evil. :/
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Most cell phones in the US are subsidized. You can pay the $99 and then the 2-yr contract or the unsubsidized price of $599. It's your choice...
Apple won't sell me an unlocked iPhone. Amazon doesn't have it, nor does Newegg.
Another point to make is that Apple has no control over what AT&T will charge you for the contract.
Not directly, but the fact that they only sell an AT&T-locked version means that I must go through AT&T to use get one. If Apple wasn't so restrictive, I could buy an unlocked v
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Apple won't sell me an unlocked iPhone. Amazon doesn't have it, nor does Newegg.
Buy one overseas, then. The US is the only country where you can't buy unlocked iPhones.
If Apple wasn't so restrictive, I could buy an unlocked version from them and use it with my existing AT&T account, or my T-Mobile account.
It's not Apple who is being restrictive, but AT&T - see above point that iPhoines are sold unlocked everywhere outside the US.
Re:Sorry dude, it's fake (Score:5, Insightful)
Buy one overseas, then. The US is the only country where you can't buy unlocked iPhones.
I'd rather buy from a company that actually wants my money; Apple apparently doesn't.
It's not Apple who is being restrictive, but AT&T - see above point that iPhoines are sold unlocked everywhere outside the US.
And whose choice is that? Apple's. It's their phone.
They're the company that chose to make the exclusive deal with AT&T. Without Apple, AT&T wouldn't have any say in the matter.
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You missed the point. The price of a phone in the US is somewhat misleading because they are almost always subsidized. So someone trying to say that the $99 iPhone is expensive is meaningless because you have to buy a 2yr contract if you want the cheap phone price.
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And your point is? Most cell phones in the US are subsidized. You can [etc.]
Everything after your first sentence is irrelevant, because that wasn't his point.
Hal Porter and EvanED's point was that the "$99" genuine iPhone being compared with the fake $120 one in truth would work out significantly more expensive because it was only available at that subsidised price with an expensive contract.
Even if the contract worked out well for some people, it's still misleading to compare the pricepoint of the subsidised iPhone with the (probably) non-tied fake model.
Re:Sorry dude, it's fake (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yeah, but what would the service cost without the phone? If AT&T split out the "phone subsidy" from the monthly price so you could see what it was, I think you'd discover that most of that $1800 is actually what you'd be paying anyway for the service. And it's not like the competing cell phone companies here have very different rate plans - they seem about equivalent to me, last time I checked a couple weeks ago.
For example, let's use T-Mobile, and pretend they offer the iPhone. They discount the p
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The point is that $599 is way more than $120, as mentioned in the OP.
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That's the can do spirit that has made America what it is today!
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It all depends. How easy is it to get one? If I knew there was a guy in town that had a knock-off phone shop, and he'd warranty it for a year, I'd spend the $40 with him, rather than full price elsewhere, or to be tied into a perpetual contract. Hell, if he warrantied it for 6 months, he'd probably get my sale.
I'm one of many, who usually don't qualify for the discounted 2 year plans, so my choices (if I wanted an iPhone) would be the full retail no-contract rate, which I be
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The US may not have "Iphone fakes", but obviously there is a market for $120 or similar phones, without contract. The Iphone fake things sounds more a property of fashion than technicality - people are engulfed by the RDF, and think they look hip if they have an Iphone.
I showed him mine and the way it's supposed to work, with just a light flick of the finger.
So his had a resistive screen - try using your phone with gloves sometime, and see how well that works for you.
Botnet (Score:5, Interesting)
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"I wouldn't be surprised either if the the devices sold by American companies had same backdoor for government wire-taping."
Wait, the government is taping wires to things now? I've heard some pretty wacky conspiracy theories in the past but this one sounds feasible! Any suggestions on how to protect ourselves from this nefarious plot? (I'm all out of tin-foil. Oh noes!!)
News Flash: (Score:2)
When you buy a name-brand item from someone you don't know on the street or in a bar, you get a cheap knock-off.
Film at eleven.
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Well, you could take the time to get to know them. But they'd probably still sell you the cheap knock-off.
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And all this time I thought if I were to buy a name-brand product for dirt cheap at a bar that it would be stolen property.
Probably in the states its more likely to be stolen at least rather than a knock-off. Knock-offs are more likely at the flea markets in the states rather than at bars.
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Great timing (Score:2, Interesting)
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On one hand, what possible use is a phone that actually doesn't work?
On the other hand, what fun is it to play with an obvious iPhone knockoff?
See? I could have been an economist... ''other hand' [quotationsbook.com]... In fact,
I might actually be one now...
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Why would you pay actual money for 'complete garbage'?
Ok, $5 maybe. But I've got a bag of actual garbage I'll sell you for $10, if you want it.
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Be prepared for a poor web browsing experience.
Pages will show up in Chinese.
You won't be able to access some pages that require you to log in.
So? (Score:2)
. . . a bizarre auxiliary battery festooned with warnings about not pressing a button mounted on the front of the top-up device.
What happened when you pressed the button?
Re:So? (Score:5, Funny)
the universe was completely destroyed and replaced by another universe, identical to the first except it was one in which the button had not been pressed.
Re:So? (Score:5, Funny)
A notice comes up saying "Please Do Not Press This Button Again"
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Well, I got the reference even if no mods did.
maybe it's better? (Score:2, Insightful)
I've been using one for the last year (Score:2, Informative)
I initially bought one of these as a joke.
At first I hated it, but it really grew on me. Having an unlocked iPhone form-factor phone, that I can transfer anything I want to it, pictures, music, movies, all over usb, is really nice. I took it traveling and really liked having two batteries, especially after I started reading books on it. Say what you want about the new eBook readers, but I love having a backlit screen that can fit in my pocket, fit hundreds of books on microSD cards, and has a backup batt
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What's the OS? Does it run Mobibook reader?
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The one thing which would make me seriously consider buying one (or more) of these phones - even though I'm in an all-CDMA area - is the ability to run Linux on them - Maemo/Moblin/Android or similar.
So, I have to wonder: why hasn't anyone put Linux on any of these, and why isn't there an extensive modding community? Do they have DRM or some such thing preventing such a thing, or are so many corners taken that booting anything but the stock ROM will fail? A new $50 ARM computer with decent specs and a usabl
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Oh yeah, I thought I might add: if the asking price in a Chinese market is $40, you know they'll part with the device for a fraction of that. They probably get them for $10-15 each and are pleased if they make $25 each.
WTF? (Score:2)
They're all over the place... (Score:2)
The icons (Score:2)
Odd how they decided to rip off some icons for the interface but not others. And some of the ones they did rip off were used for unrelated apps like the Safari browser icon for an app named "Compass." Strange.
Could they get Android to run on it? (Score:2)
Re:WARNING I have a friend (Score:4, Funny)
That was obvious from the subject line.
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Sounds like a better premise than the the last ~500 movies of the week on Syfy.
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You got something against snakes?
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Now he's Chinaman, fighting against injustice by kicking evildoers with a leg that weighs several billion metric tons, which tends to
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That's a wonderfully 'legitimate' looking website...
Re:fraud (Score:4, Funny)