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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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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.
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.
Fashion is knowing that nobody wears watches anymore.
I see a lot of people wearing fitness bands. Which are also watches.
http://appleplugs.com/
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
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.
Which is why GP referred to it as "the biggest breakthrough". Making "a really good implementation" ain't nothing, as evidenced by the fact that so many companies do it so poorly. The same was true with the iPod and the original iPhone: they weren't the first, but Apple's were a damn site better than what consumers had been told to accept.
I'd rather have the opposite: a kit to give the new one a normal headphone jack.
You haven't seen the youtube video? You can do it yourself!