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What You Get When You Buy a $40 iPhone In a Bar
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."
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!
I do what I must because of what I must do.
the iPhony!
Arrested?
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
From TFA: The final nail in the coffin was an app we found five screens in, which even allowing for "cultural differences" Apple would never allow through the approvals process. The app in questions showed a lissom Asian lady lying on a bed who wriggles and moans suggestively when you rub your finger over her.
So Apple would not allow this, but we can have like 100 fart apps? That's pretty messed up.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Ashens did a review of one of these a while ago (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...)
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.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
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!
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!"
I do what I must because of what I must do.
This thing is far more useful than an iPhone!
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)
I wouldn't at all be surprised, especially for the rediculously low selling price, if it's got botnet software embedded right into it, and this is part of an overall plan to create a wireless and mobile botnet. Either that, or a tool for direct identity theft or worse.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Even if it doesn't, that's almost as good as the phone in an iPhone.
Why not? It sounds at least as good as any other cheap touchscreen phone at a quarter of the price.
Well, you could take the time to get to know them. But they'd probably still sell you the cheap knock-off.
Alright, so I made that whole story up.
That was obvious from the subject line.
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
Note, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_van_speaker_scam is the correct URL, that extra "/" at the end seems to make wikipedia sad.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
Sounds like a better premise than the the last ~500 movies of the week on Syfy.
I *just* ordered one of these from eBay yesterday. I needed a cheap unlocked phone, this option was cheaper than most name-brand used phones and at the price I paid, I won't be terribly upset if it's complete garbage.
i bet it'll run flash before the iphone does.
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.
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 battery. I could read clearly at night in bed or waiting for the subway in poorly lit areas.
It's really funny to watch an iPhone user try to use my phone, because even though it looks nearly the same, the screen handles way differently, needing more of a tap than a slide.
I wouldn't buy one of these for running apps on, I would just use it for an eBook reader and phone. That's all I wanted out of it and it exceeded my initial expectations.
This is the one I have: http://product.madeinchina.com/CECT-i9-Quadband-Unlocked-Dual-Sim-PDA-Smart-phone/10618567.shtml
If all you want is a unlocked phone and eBook reader with awesome battery life, give it a try. But the article is right that it can't compare to an iPhone. The user interface sucks compared to Apple's product, especially when you move into the submenus.
A notice comes up saying "Please Do Not Press This Button Again"
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?!?!"
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Sure its a fake, but will it run linux?
Arrested as in beer, not as in speech.
One of my colleagues once bought a cheap Chinese MP4 player but it had a Sony battery and got so hot it melted in his pocket. When the doctor cut away his pants to examine the damage it turned out that China had actually partially merged into his leg -- he now has a large chunk of Asia in his lower hip. Pretty disgusting but there are some great camping sites near his knee.
Now he's Chinaman, fighting against injustice by kicking evildoers with a leg that weighs several billion metric tons, which tends to hurt them a lot. His arch nemesis is every single Chinese citizen because they're not too thrilled about some random twit constantly tossing their entire country around. Also, the local tram company; fitting China into a tram is really difficult. He also can't fight injustice during Chinese New Year as his leg goes home to be with its family.
Okay, so I made that up. The tram company doesn't really hate him.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
In many ways it's not about the technology at all. It's not like the iPhone represents things which are that far ahead of the technological curve.
It's about piggybacking on Apple's huge marketing presence and brand-name-recognition.
Those bootleggers could use the same amount of technical "hard work" to create a distinctive and useful device which does 80% of what an iPhone does at 20% of the cost... And then fail to make any money at all because everyone would buy the iPhone anyway.
Too bad we don't live in a world where the substance of technology always wins over the form of its marketing presence. But hey, anyone running Linux knows that :p
The guy got a functioning touchscreen smartphonefor £25. Counterfeit or not, it's hard to call that a ripoff IMHO.
My experience with Chinese knockoff products is that they're half the quality, more versatile, and ten percent the price. Often a better overall deal than the original.