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In China, Some Apple Users Opt For iPhone Makeover Rather Than Buy New (reuters.com)
Instead of buying a new iPhone model, some Chinese iPhone owners are giving their old models a makeover to look like the latest version -- a trend that could dent Apple's efforts to boost sales in what has been its biggest growth driver. Catherine Cadell, reporting for Reuters: Online sites offer shoppers makeover kits, false cameras and even dust plugs to hide the removed headphone jack to give their iPhone 6 or 6S the appearance of the iPhone 7 -- Apple's latest flagship product which launched last month. The makeover quirk mirrors a broader view among some Chinese users that the iPhone 7 doesn't have enough new features to convince them to trade up. "I don't have the money to upgrade, and the (iPhone) 7 is just so-so," said a Beijing-based sales worker, who said he was getting a Shenzhen firm to replace his iPhone 6 back casing with a fake iPhone 7 shell. "I'm changing it to show off," he said, giving only his surname Gao as he wasn't sure that what he was doing was legal. Searches on platforms including Alibaba's Taobao showed a range of products to transform older phones to an iPhone 7 -- from stickers and engraving services to replacing the outer casing and even some of the hardware.
So they did just did it themselves in stead of paying Apple for it
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For us non-Apple fanbois: How does one model iPhone differ from another, externally? I can't even recall ever seeing the number printed on the chassis.
How pathetic. Proves Apple products are mainly used by fashion victims.
And it's free!
love is just extroverted narcissism
wasn't sure that what he was doing was legal
For crying out loud, whose phone is it anyway? Void the warranty, sure, but illegal? Give me a break.
If you can't afford a real Rolex, buy a fake Rolex for five bucks. It's not like your friends can tell the difference anyway.
So incredibly shiny, and bendy, on purpose!
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
The biggest breakthrough Apple had with the iPhone was TouchID. Everything since has been a better camera and it runs faster. The problem is my 5s is plenty fast and the resolution is more than good enough.
Once cordless charging gets to the iPhone and the resolution goes above 1080p, then that's a game changer. Once the screen goes to OLED, that's a game changer. Until then, my iPhone 5s is plenty fast with a great screen.
This need to show off nets the smartphone makers millions of sales every year. Most of those people couldn't tell the difference if you gave them a 3 year old smartphone in the enclosure of the new one.
Hated the iPhone 6 and 7, so I bought the Asia-only iPhone 5 SE with 64 memory.
Small, fast, long battery life, fits in my pocket.
Fashion is knowing that nobody wears watches anymore. And big phones are a sign you're wasting cash.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I have noticed that, as of late, Slashdot stories link to Reuters articles - and Reuters is definitely the top news organization in our solar system (as far as we know).
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
I'd rather have the opposite: a kit to give the new one a normal headphone jack.
Table-ized A.I.
http://appleplugs.com/
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
so people don't think I'm a homo
iPhone Y
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Its all fun and games until someone tries to throw your "iPhone 7" in the pool since they think its waterproof
It sure seems like some people would be into a modular phone, considering what they're willing to invest in cosmetic-only upgrades with no functional purpose.
Maybe the Ara project approached it wrong -- rather than looking at phone upgrades from a purely geek-centric perspective of specific hardware improvement modularity, maybe they should have considered the "trend" factor would be a driving force -- ie, people would be willing to buy modules that weren't really an upgrade, but instead were popular or had some other trend factor.
This is kind of sad, really. These people lust for the new product but will fake it in order just to fool others into thinking they have it. And they even admit that there's no compelling reason to 'upgrade' to the new shiny. It's a techno-tragicomedy.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Dust plug to hide the headphone jack!?!?!?
No phone port? No upgrade I say. Ether way, China will find a way to cheap out.
Until about three months ago I did not properly understand the Apple phenomenon. I have always been an early adopter of tech enjoying the features for their own sake. However I am circumspect when I buy new technology as I peruse the specs and look at user reviews. With the exception of the early MacBook Airs that had no lightweight competition, and the iPhones until 2011, it has never made any financial sense to buy Apple products. They have always been 20% to 40% more expensive than the their competitors.
I did buy the original iPhone 3G when it came out. It was clearly the best product on the market and was a new way of using the internet. I loved it. However, the Android OS quickly advanced after it was bought by Google. By Ice Cream Sandwich Android was competitively stable. By Jelly Bean it started to outfeature iOS. And Android was versatile. An iPhone could not be used as a USB flash drive, whereas an Android based phone could be. Android was so much more configurable. And it could be rooted with Google's permission unlike Apple's aversion to jailbreaking. I could store all manner of file types and have different music players on my Android device. I was not chained to iTunes.
So I switched to high end Android devices. And I could not understand why others did not. But this summer and early this fall I met some new acquaintances and after hearing them insist that they would only have a iPhone I understood that Apple products were status symbols and that they wanted to show off. They want their MacBook to be seen when they used it in a coffee shop. They wants the 'oohs' that come with the flashy logo. The phone in their hand signaled style.
Of course, these are often (not always) the same people who often parrot the mainstream mantra about us being too 'materialistic' (no matter that real median household income is only about 10% above what it was in 1973 and people under 35 are poorer despite being better educated than in 1973 with much larger real housing costs). They seem to think that if they buy no name brand clothes and spend their saved money on Apple products, somehow they are no longer materialistic. They talk about environmentalism as being core to their being and ignore the planned obsolescence that is core to Apple's products. I tried to assist a friend with a three year old Apple laptop. It needed more memory because it had become quite slow as software had advanced. We went to the Apple store and were gently laughed at when we tried to buy new ram - we were told they did not stock it any more and that they should buy a new laptop instead.
So now when I see a hipster-greenie hypocrite conspicuously or otherwise using their Apple product in public I see a cynical manipulative liar.
First off, this is nothing new. Even back when it was iPhone 4/4s, around 5 years ago, you could already white iPhone-mods in China (i.e. actually replace the case of your black iPhone 4/4s to a white one) before Apple sold white iPhone 4/4s. So this "news" is already at least 5 years late.
Secondly, how is this different from car owners doing a makeover on their cars. Do we get news headlines "In American, Some Ford Owners Opt For Makeover Rather Than Of Buying New"? Duh. How is this news?
But of course, when it came to Apple, anything one lure a whole bunch of Apple haters and fanboys is good clickbait.