I Went to China and All I Got Was This Lousy iPhone

By

ShanghaiApple is getting grief for what appears to be an underwhelming launch of the iPhone in China.

It is not really a surprise – China is awash in fake and gray market iPhones.  When you walk down the street, the street hawkers greet you with “Watch, DVD, iPhone”.

Why settle for the WiFi-less plain old iPhone sold by China Unicom when you can choose from the much wider variety of iPhones available in China?

There are flip iPhones:

China August 2009 031Fake phones

Mini iPhones:

image

A “Lengthened edition”:

image

Additional colors:

China August 2009 028

The hardware quality is very good – the straight knockoffs are pretty much indistinguishable from the real thing.  But what is really cool is there are multiple fake iPhone software loads that are evolving quickly: 

China August 2009 025 China August 2009 024

Note the Finder, Windows Media and Firefox icons (the Firefox icon launches Opera).

One response

  1. and who said innovation only comes out of Cupertino?!

Get Updates By Email
%d bloggers like this: