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Copycat Android Phone From Gionee Includes 3D Touch Quick Actions, Peek and Pop

I'd say this phone rips about 60% from Apple and 40% from Samsung. I wouldn't be too pleased about this phone if I were either company.

And I love how some people can't recognize the difference between stealing concepts and stealing entire implementations. It's one thing to have a pressure sensitive screen. It's another thing entirely to essentially copy and paste 3D Touch onto your phone.

As far as the exterior goes, it looks eerily reminiscent of the Galaxy Note 4/S5. Not litigiously so, just lazily so.

Say what you want about Xiaomi, but at least their latest phone is quite tasteful- if not amazing.
 
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Pagemakers said:
Why copy 3D Touch? 90% of its implementations are terrible. Most the time I forget I even have it.
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I love your home made statistics. But I am quite good at it too, when people go up north in the UK 90% of their stuff gets nicked. Now that was as well researched as your claim.
 
igorsky said:
I often wonder why people think patent suits stifle innovation, but don't think the same about copying. How exactly does (lazily) copying ideas contribute to innovation?
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Then by your logic, Apple needs to get rid of plenty of features it copied from Android and Samsung.
 
Some random notes:

Apple did not invent pressure sensitive menus - The idea goes back pretty far, possibly into the 1980s when pressure sensitive tablets started showing up.

However, a more recent example is from researchers who published an article in 2001, called "Pop through Mouse Button Interactions". That article was referenced by a later 2001 research article from NY Columbia University, which noted that:

"Inspired by this work, we have tried to explore the possibility of using pressure thresholds to extend the number of directly accessible menu trees.

"We adapt the idea of “pop-through” menu expansion to the multi-strip based menu-navigation system and introduce secondary menu trees, which may be accessed by applying firm pressure to a given linear strip. We call the menus accessible with light pressure primary menu trees.

"Once a preset pressure threshold is exceeded, the user pops through to an underlying secondary menu tree. In informal tests, we have found that users quickly learn what the threshold pressure level is and directly access the needed menu with a relatively small error rate."

In other words, basically what Apple implemented a decade and a half later on a touch screen. Even their "pop" reference to an underlying menu is the same.

The user visible piece is not the hard part - Apple themselves have claimed that the UI was easy. That what was hard was the technology behind it.

In other words, making the screen pressure sensitive, determining the right amounts of pressure, etc. So if someone was able to duplicate that work easily, then Apple blew the difficulty of that part out of proportion.
 
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IMG_3381.jpg
 
FSMBP said:
So Android users can now not use this feature as well...Other than hardcore power-users, I have rarely seen anyone use 3D Touch on purpose. I taught my girlfriend how to use it when she got her 6S months ago and it's never been used again.
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Takes a paradigm shift in how you access functionality. Not surprising that she hasn't used it since.
 
coolfactor said:
Takes a paradigm shift in how you access functionality. Not surprising that she hasn't used it since.
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Not her fault.

Because there's no standard hint as to what pages support it, 3D Touch requires the user to check to see if the option is implemented anywhere on each screen. After a while of finding screens with no 3D support, most users will stop bothering.

As various user interface blogs have noted, it's a great technical idea, but was implemented a bit poorly from a UX standpoint.

(This is somewhat similar to the Apple Watch UI, which tortures the user in places by making them guess or remember what input method to use.)

Apple partly became famous because it used to concentrate on making UI things easy and fun and discoverable, if not outright visible.
 
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Unless it works just as well, which I doubt, it rips from no one.
Creating crap by copying others takes little skill.
[doublepost=1456355768][/doublepost]
LIVEFRMNYC said:
Then by your logic, Apple needs to get rid of plenty of features it copied from Android and Samsung.
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Most of which existed in IOS jailbreaks and on the desktop (even mac desktops) before Android. got them.
Or are you asserting that if its done on a phone it's "new".
 
"more closely resembles an Android device than an iPhone, but it does have a similar rear camera, a 5.5-inch screen, a body that's 7mm thick, a fingerprint sensor, and an aluminum body."

So admittedly it looks more like an Android, but because it has a 5.5 inch screen and is 7mm thick and has an aluminum body then it's an iPhone clone? Every metallic phone that has 5.5 inch screen and is 7mm thick is an iPhone clone? Ridiculous.

Just the fact that it comes with a microSD slot (something no iPhone has ever had) differentiates it enough from an iPhone that there is NO MISTAKE that it's no iPhone.
 
Keirasplace said:
Most of which existed in IOS jailbreaks and on the desktop (even mac desktops) before Android. got them.
Or are you asserting that if its done on a phone it's "new".
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You're kidding yourself if you think split screen multitasking, Apple Pencil, location based reminders, notification center, and a ton more to list, wasn't influenced by Android and Samsung.
 
InfoTime said:
I don't use it. Most of the time it gets in the way of the way I used to do things. I'll admit I've never really sat down and given it a fair shake. Maybe I should give it a try.
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You definitely should. It's a fantastic feature. It's biggest downsides are that it's not universal across all apps (that will change), and for me at least a persistent bug that doesn't let me activate the keyboard cursor twice in a row.

But I rarely use the home button anymore, and it's substantially changed (read: improved) how I interact with mail, pictures, and the Internet.
 
Personally I think to Goophone i6S V6 is the most amazing rip off I have seen so far.

If it didn't open Google Play when pushing the App Store icon and Google Maps when opening the Maps application I would be completely fooled on purchase.
 
MacRumors said:



Chinese smartphone manufacturer Gionee debuted its Gionee Elife S8 at Mobile World Congress this week, and the new device mimics the iPhone in both look and functionality. Available in silver, gold, and rose gold shades, the Elife S8's exterior design more closely resembles an Android device than an iPhone, but it does have a similar rear camera, a 5.5-inch screen, a body that's 7mm thick, a fingerprint sensor, and an aluminum body.

gionee.jpg

Image via GSM Arena​
Most notably, it includes a pressure-sensitive display with built-in software features that look a lot like 3D Touch on the iPhone 6s. As described by BGR, the Elife S8 steals both Peek and Pop and Quick Actions from Apple. Pressing on an icon on the Home screen brings up a list of shortcuts, as seen in the image below. For example, a press on the camera app includes Quick Actions to take a snapshot, video, or selfie.

gioneequickaction.jpg

Image via BGR​
There are also Peek and Pop gestures for previewing content, and a press on the left edge of the screen brings up a list of "Edge" apps. This differs from Apple's multitasking functionality, but it's the same general idea. Several hands-on reviews of the Elife S8 have noted the "too close for comfort" similarities between 3D Touch and Gionee's pressure-sensitive display.

gioneesidebar.jpg

Image via BGR​
The Gionee Elife S8's other features include an octa-core Mediatek MT6755 processor, 4GB RAM, 64GB storage with a micro SD card slot, a 16-megapixel rear camera and an 8-megapixel front-facing camera. It's priced at ~$500 and will be available to consumers in two months.

Gionee is not the first Android phone to include 3D Touch-like features. The Huawei Mate S has a pressure-sensitive display and launched ahead of the iPhone, but it does not attempt to copy the look of iOS or its specific implementation of 3D Touch. A pressure-sensitive display was also one of the features rumored for the Galaxy S7 and the Galaxy S7 Edge, but the two phones launched earlier this week without the feature.

Article Link: Copycat Android Phone From Gionee Includes 3D Touch Quick Actions, Peek and Pop
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[doublepost=1456373881][/doublepost]How easily these gionee and Xiomi companies copied Apple design and features. They are shameless companies. No standards. Just copy and sell at lower price.
 
Rogifan said:
They're not talking about the aesthetic look of the hardware, they're talking about the 3D Touch rip-off.

This isn't about the phone's exterior it's about 3D touch.
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"...the new device mimics the iPhone in both look and functionality..."

Maybe you should stop repeating this. Clearly the article is claiming both even though the phone apes Samsung more than anything else. It's a Frankenstein's monster of Samsung and Apple.
 
Benjamin Frost said:
And yet, Samsung, the chief copycat, chose not to offer 3D Touch or anything like it in their latest phone.

That, to my mind, speaks volumes as to the worth of the feature.
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Exactly. If Samsung was not able to pull it off, this particular implementation must be awful, like all Chinese copies.
 
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