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Fake Chinese iPhones Look Pretty Convincing

Funny Story - I was in Beijing last week, and one day I went to the Silk market (big multistory market, everything from clothes to electronics).

I was browsing the cell phone aisle, checking out all of the 'genuine apple iphones' - first, it was interesting that a single shop could be selling four different 'genuine apple iphones'. But then, one of the guys selling them asked if I wanted one, and I said 'nah, I already have one' and pulled mine out of my pocket. Then the guy running the shop gets really excited and says 'oh a real one! I'll buy it from you! $200!'

Made me giggle at least. What a fun town though.
 
my friend had the Cect P168, the first iphone clone to actually be released. Now he has the HiPhone. Both work perfect on T-Mobile USA. The HiPhone actually does a good job cloning the original iphone, but it has some MAJOR glitches.
 
A windows lover in the office bought a knockoff. It's a POS, cheap materials, flimsy construction, no wifi,
the LCD from the knockoff is both lower resolution AND smaller.

The best part is that it died after 6 weeks and he asked me for help. LOL.
 
Just because they are both assembled in the same country doesn't mean they use the same parts or share any similarity besides someone copying and pasting Apple icons onto a low quality device.

Dodge Viper SRT10 and Dodge Ram 2500 Laramie are both made in the same country. In term of Consumer Reports 2008, Best & worst in safety performance, one of those has one of the best safety performance, while the other one has close to the worst performance. Guess what? They are both assembled in the same country.

By the way, China has one of the highest number of first generation iPhone in a non-officially released country. And guess what? To buy one in China you have to get one from the US. (What, you think the factories has no security or inventory control? :rolleyes:)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/business/worldbusiness/18iphone.html?8br

And for the one who obviously don't know how to determine what is a suspicious post, please don't cry to us if you get no poor quality knockoff AND your credit card number is stolen, or (if you actually get it) that the poor quality knockoff dies after 2 months.
 
jmadlena said:
I thought that they had just copied the the OS over to their knockoff version, but seeing as how some stuff is clearly wrong, does that mean they made it themselves? If so, they did a pretty good job.
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Did it themselves?? Lol, dude, THEY make the real iPhones.

You have to understand how this counterfeit business works. In "daytime" they produce real western merchandise, electronics, clothing etc. Then they get paid by underground companies to use the same assembly lines and the same blueprints to produce cheaper models with cheaper components and no quality assurance.

I knew a professional audio company that produced speakers (studio monitors) for film post production places. They were in business 40 years then outsourced the construction to china. The chinese mock ups started flooding the market and since the quality was real bad they went out of business 2 years after their chinese venture.
 
LaDirection said:
Did it themselves?? Lol, dude, THEY make the real iPhones.

You have to understand how this counterfeit business works. In "daytime" they produce real western merchandise, electronics, clothing etc. Then they get paid by underground companies to use the same assembly lines and the same blueprints to produce cheaper models with cheaper components and no quality assurance.
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Riiiiighhhht.

In this case, if any of that were true, there'd be more in common between these knockoffs and the original. Cosmetically it might be similar but other than looks it's nothing like an iPhone. Looks more like they're using off the shelf parts they use for all their other cheapass handsets - no need to have the iphone blueprints or anything. I don't think they'd be using the same assembly lines, thats ridiculous. (though a v funny thought)..
 
mixel said:
Riiiiighhhht.

In this case, if any of that were true, there'd be more in common between these knockoffs and the original. Cosmetically it might be similar but other than looks it's nothing like an iPhone. Looks more like they're using off the shelf parts they use for all their other cheapass handsets - no need to have the iphone blueprints or anything. I don't think they'd be using the same assembly lines, thats ridiculous. (though a v funny thought)..
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So these phones are not knockoffs then? They just look a bit like the iPhone. It's not unusual for western companies to copy features from products made by their competition, Microsoft have been doing it for years! So why is it so bad to Chinese businesses to copy the look of the iPhone? It's a different product because it has different functionality, so as long as it's not marketed as an original iPhone what's the issue?
 
LaDirection said:
Did it themselves?? Lol, dude, THEY make the real iPhones.

You have to understand how this counterfeit business works. In "daytime" they produce real western merchandise, electronics, clothing etc. Then they get paid by underground companies to use the same assembly lines and the same blueprints to produce cheaper models with cheaper components and no quality assurance.

I knew a professional audio company that produced speakers (studio monitors) for film post production places. They were in business 40 years then outsourced the construction to china. The chinese mock ups started flooding the market and since the quality was real bad they went out of business 2 years after their chinese venture.
Click to expand...

Anyone who doesn't understand China is out to reduce the West to ashes doesn't know history or current events. It galls me that Jobs outsources there. We Westerners "project" that because they are Asian, there is some "higher" moral code they adhere to (because we Western "capitalists" are so greedy or something).

This idea is patently wrong. There is so much corruption in China you can literally get killed for speaking out. It is still a totalitarian state, Marxist to the core, but they just allow the "sheeple" a rope's worth of phony capitalism to keep them from rioting. Someone makes too much money for the oligarchs? Forget it; you are out of business. The West needs to WAKE UP and quit thinking we are getting "cheaper" labor there. Nothing is free and they feel very free to help themselves to our patents, our intellectual property, and make knock offs of everything from our iPHones to Mercedes Benzes.

When Is Steve Jobs going to pull out of China? I know a lot of hard working people in California who wouldn't think of running an iPhone factory afterhours to make their own cheap knock offs. And if Steve did do work back in the West, even Western Europe, at least Apple could have better oversight of their factories: it wouldn't be a two day trip just to see where MacBooks are made. Apple, wake up.
 
Wow big money making opportunity, order them in bulk and sell them from the back of the trunk as "Hot iphones" cash only, quick before the cops come only 150 buks.

I bet you can make a huge killing here in the us.
 
The iPhone market, as well as many other cellphones' market is huge, and it's not only the USA or Europe.

In many 3rd world countries there are more cellphones than cars, computers, etc...
There is market for anything.
This chinese phone will sell, because there is a huge market for phones like it.
About this thread title: Look Pretty Convincing, this is so relative, I highly doubt that any MR member will be deceived by this HIPhone, and in other people's mind this will be the way to go.
The best tactic for this HIPhone marketing is to take advantage that everybody knows there is new iPhone coming, and many people haven't even saw it, specially on TV, the news programs (not cnn, regular tv channels) typically broadcast news with old footage, and you can see them talking about the new iPhone but showing the first gen iPhone videos instead of the new to come iPhone 3G. Many people will buy it.
This HIPhone is affordable and will make many buyers in other markets happy for some time.

I wouldn't ever buy it, but I find very interesting that its design shows that many hardware things could be included in that size factor: like the dual SIM slots, what by the way a good friend has always asked me when this feature is going to be available in the :apple: iPhone.
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sc2 replay
 
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Standing Amazed said:
So these phones are not knockoffs then? They just look a bit like the iPhone. It's not unusual for western companies to copy features from products made by their competition, Microsoft have been doing it for years! So why is it so bad to Chinese businesses to copy the look of the iPhone? It's a different product because it has different functionality, so as long as it's not marketed as an original iPhone what's the issue?
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Are you really from New Zealand?

Copying generally a feature or set of features is one thing -- copying it in its implementation is another. In other words, making really similar but different icons, similar but different browsers, etc., would amount to having a different product. To copy just the look might not even in itself be too problematic, but just having "different functionality" in some way doesn't really let you off the hook for infringing on patent rights and so on. To get it to look so similar, they had to have used a lot of copyrighted material and such.

Besides, legal technicalities aside, don't you think there's something wrong when you're obviously trying to trick consumers into buying what amounts to a fake?
 
(L) said:
Are you really from New Zealand?

Copying generally a feature or set of features is one thing -- copying it in its implementation is another. In other words, making really similar but different icons, similar but different browsers, etc., would amount to having a different product. To copy just the look might not even in itself be too problematic, but just having "different functionality" in some way doesn't really let you off the hook for infringing on patent rights and so on. To get it to look so similar, they had to have used a lot of copyrighted material and such.

Besides, legal technicalities aside, don't you think there's something wrong when you're obviously trying to trick consumers into buying what amounts to a fake?
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Erm.... yes I really am from NZ, are you really from 'L'? or are you ashamed to reveal where you're from? Why would you question my location?

My point is that they haven't cloned the iPhone. they've may a lesser product that looks a bit like the iPhone, but it is inferior in many different ways. I don't believe for a minute that many people are going to be fooled into thinking this is an iPhone, but it'll sell because it looks cool. This isn't a case of copying a T shirt to sell in a market as the real thing - that's what a knockoff is.
 
I also wanted to add that I have seen a "hIphone". My coworker has one, and while the aesthetics are pretty accurate (I thought for SURE it was real at first glance), the touch interface is laggy, choppy, and the screen resolution is a joke. He's on AT&T, and why he paid $190 for it is beyond me.
 
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