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Review: A Counterfeit, $100 iPhone X
- roseway4 6y ago2018
- tmikaeld 6y agoLooks like it's designed for scammers who sell it to gullible people on the street, making them feel like it's a "once-in-a-lifetime" deal.
- wruza 6y agoYes, tearing it out of heart for $100 because emergency. A tale as old as time.
- colejohnson66 6y agoIt could also be for people who want the status symbol of owning an iPhone without shelling out for one. That’s very common in China.
- axaxs 6y agoYeah, this is what I was thinking. I'm not so sure this phone is intended to scam gullible people, just to give people a plausible status symbol.
- srtjstjsj 6y agoIt's both. And even if the user knows what it is, the purpose is still to scam other gullible people (who may deserve it).
- reaperducer 6y agoIt could also be for people who want the status symbol of owning an iPhone without shelling out for one. That’s very common in China. In the early part of this century, I used to travel in Asia quite a bit, and I started collecting knock-off Apple products as souvenirs. I had quite a collection of various look-alikes at one point. It was a cheap hobby because they were all very inexpensive, and if you were in the right country or situation, you could haggle the price down a little further. They were all in the one box that got lost (stolen?) when I moved out of Seattle. (Not Apple-related, but I still have a watch that plays videos [loaded with On Her Majesty's Secret Service and The Incredibles] that I picked up in Singapore for US$30 around 2005.)
- Darkphibre 6y ago>They were all in the one box that got lost (stolen?) when I moved out of Seattle I'd like to imagine the karma involved in the thief thinking they'd made it... only to discover what they'd nicked. My condolences for losing the physical objects, but I'm glad you have those memories. Thanks for sharing!
- scns 6y agoIt is quite common in europe, for people to knowingly buy knock off clothing or sunglasses when they go on vacation.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoNot just in China though, western culture also has a knack for having / showing off status symbols. Like clean / unworn sneakers, or vintage T-shirts, or early Magic / Pokemon cards, or mechanical / customized keyboards (to be used in photoshoots on minimalist and/or vaporwave-themed workspaces of course).
- filmgirlcw 6y agoI would argue that “status” related to “stuff” is one of the strongest cultural exports the west has had on the rest of the world. Yes, status (which is often a stand-in for class, if we’re honest) existed before the west, but the value (and by extension, class stand-in) to consumer brands is something the west has very successfully exported to the rest of the world. It’s why nearly every major brand with “status” is a western brand. This has changed in some sectors (automobiles, though real “status” is still largely given to German or Italian or high-end British variants — there is some status around Asian car brands, significantly less around almost all American brands — and in some areas of electronics, Japanese brands became the status symbols in the 1980s and beyond, Sony is a prime example here), but by and large, the brands that exhibit “status” in non-western countries (and I’ll expand this to parts of Europe that came of age in the post Soviet era), in my experience, it’s the western brands that gain the most attention. Dubai, as an example, has a tremendous amount of wealth on display. It’s the height of nouveau riche, even though the money itself is very old, and as a westerner, I was floored by the near religious dedication to western culture and brands. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Cara de Lavigne or Kendall Jenner’s face on as many billboards in my life. Seeing a Red Lobster in Dubai with a line even longer than the one in Times Square, largely by non-tourists from what I could tell, in a place where many of the people there have far more money than the average Red Lobster patron in the US, was incredibly fascinating.
- xhkkffbf 6y agoThey should really raise the price if they want to suck in the gullible. Many more people will bite if the price is only 20-40% off the going rate.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tluyben2 6y agoIt needs to be a very quick deal: I saw quite a few walking at shanghai, bangkok and hk airport; they do not want you to think about it. A lot of business people do not care about $100, but 300-400 would make them pause and actually think. These phones you can get for a $25 or even less I guess, but I saw them for 25 in shops. Not worth as a phone even at that price though... Except that they look the part.
- dehrmann 6y agoJust a friendly reminder that most scams involve creating a sense of urgency. There are phishing attack emails saying "the CEO urgently needs access to X." Back when my grandma would answer calls from unknown numbers, she got one saying "your grandson is in jail and needs bail money."
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoThese are from the producer / "first" party; you can buy a dozen of these and palm them off to others for example. Not sure about ebay because they can have their money returned etc, but someone mentioned elsewhere that they bought it off the street somewhere.
- atVelocet 6y agoThis is true: A friend of mine bought it on the street in Frankfurt am Main (Germany) from a shady guy that approached him and eventually sold it to him. He was totally excited and showed it to me. On first glance it looked like a real iPhone 5s/SE. But the mute button seemed strange. On inspecting the OS it became clear that he had bought a counterfeit. I knew cheap iPhone clones but this was the best one i ever came across.
- gambiting 6y agoOr, if you are like me from a country where a genuine iPhone 12 is worth about 3 months of average salary, this is an easy way to buy some status without actually spending quarter of your annual income on one. You could fool a lot of people with one of these. Same reason why fake anything exists - to sell to people who don't have means to buy the real thing(and yes, I suppose to also scam some who think they are getting the real deal, but that must be a tiny portion of the money involved in making this).
- throwaway_pdp09 6y ago> this is an easy way to buy some status This is going to sound weird but I've never found any relevance for symbols, nor any understanding of things like 'status'. What you say is like words from another language, or even concepts I don't have. So permit me: what does having status mean in practical terms, if any? Does the judgement of others matter if it's based on, to be blunt, ownership of trinkets? Not trolling, genuine question.
- sfblah 6y agoOh cmon. It means attracting women.
- throwaway_pdp09 6y agoOK, now this I would get me on the same page! But most women don't seem to care much for an expensive X, whatever that may be. Some do sure, but many? IDK
- kubanczyk 6y agoYes, many. But not in an overt way. And a fake phone will be more of a huge risk than an asset.
- NullPrefix 6y agoYou're not fooling anyone with those green bubbles.
- mobilio 6y agoWell to be honest this X works. Somehow! Because this clone doesn't: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63u6b-eHYzU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63u6b-eHYzU
- mazatta 6y agoA former coworker accidentally bought one of these on Craigslist thinking he was buying a legit one. The price was pretty close to retail (or maybe even higher, as it was close to the X launch). The seller even let him handle one that "had already been opened", which was likely a legit one and then what he ultimately bought was a sealed fake.
- 1023bytes 6y agoStrange that Goophone is not mentioned in the article, it's most likely made by them. Funny thing is they actually release the fakes ahead of the real launch. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goophone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goophone
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- temp667 6y agoI know a lot of folks on HN don't like what Apple does to confirm genuine product (ie, battery notification if a third party is swapped in etc). I feel like a lot of folks on HN don't buy used / second hand products - especially in non US / EU settings. If you did, you would IMMEDIATELY understand that if a cheapo battery can be dropped in that shows 100% battery life - IT WILL BE. And then your phone will die in a month or two. This extends to everything. Conversely, some telecom services overseas are insanely cheap by western standards. Anyone know why / how this is? For india it's $4-5/month for 3GB/day of data.
- Wowfunhappy 6y agoI can't speak for all of HN, but I don't have a problem with Apple showing that a battery isn't genuine in settings. I don't even have a problem with them throwing up a notification—as long as it's only done once, to inform rather than annoy (or frighten). Where I get upset is when Apple purposefully makes these parts difficult or impossible to replace, or removes functionality when they are detected.
- titanomachy 6y agoMaybe more than once, to make it harder for scammers to dismiss notifications and pretend they've installed a genuine battery. But yeah, a finite number of warnings, and don't brick the thing.
- Someone 6y agoI don’t see that work. If “finite” is low and delays between them short, scammers will make the effort to go through all warnings. If delays between warnings are long, the scammer will wait until one is shown and then sell the fake, and the buyer will only be warned when it’s too late. If it’s high, the difference with “forever” is small, and you’ll still be annoyed. Having a separate screen that shows the warning on demand or showing the warning only after a new sim is inserted might be the best option, but I fear too few customers would know about it.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- solarkraft 6y ago> If you buy an iPhone from Apple and replace the screen with a third-party one from China, does that make your device a counterfeit? What if you assemble an iPhone entirely out of aftermarket, recycled, or reused parts? (...) So maybe this phone isn’t Apple’s iPhone X, but it is an iPhone X. Hey, nice right to repair nod, but that phone doesn't contain any Apple parts, so it's definitely not an iPhone X.
- Darkphibre 6y agoYou addressed the first question, but I popped in to bring up this neat video I came across a few years back regarding the second question. How about this guy, who "built a like-new (but really refurbished) iPhone 6S 16GB entirely from parts purchased from the public cell phone parts markets in Huaqiangbei."? :D https://strangeparts.com/how-i-made-my-own-iphone-in-china/ https://strangeparts.com/how-i-made-my-own-iphone-in-china/ Making-of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leFuF-zoVzA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leFuF-zoVzA
- vonseel 6y agoThis phone isn't even similar enough to warrant a "compare to iPhone X" like you see on generic medicine (e.g. Equate Ibuprofen, compare to Advil). It's a straight up fake, like fake fancy sunglasses or fake fancy handbags.
- sircastor 6y agoI’m reminded of an old philosophical thought exercise I heard once: “This is George Washington’s axe. The head has been replaced twice and the handle has been replaced three times, but it’s George Washington’s axe.”
- forgotmypw17 6y agoI think I might prefer one of these to the real deal because it,s not locked down. Much of the "insecurity" the author describes just makes it work like older Android versions which don,t "secure" the phone from its own user. I,m still using Android 7 myself. My secondary device with 8 on it already has bullshit like screenshot blocking.
- asutekku 6y agoIt's a cheap Chinese android phone. It's by no means secure.
- megablast 6y agoIt clearly doesn't even look like the X if you look at the screen, with huge bezels on the top or bottom. This is just a cheap android with iOS software template.
- tradertef 6y agoClearly you have not read the article.
- userbinator 6y agoThe rest of the phone’s components are secured with metal rivets that are punched together, which effectively make the phone disposable I disagree --- as anyone who does repair on other, more mechanical appliances and such can tell you, rivets can be easily drilled out and replaced. Not as convenient as screws, but in fact I'd much rather deal with rivets than glue.
- Osiris 6y agoThe last three phone batteries I replaced were glued in (well, adhesive tape) and they were a massive pain the butt to remove. Honestly, I'm not even sure why they need such sticky adhesive since the case holds the battery in place. I assume it has to do with manufacturing, but really, a lot less (or less sticky) adhesive would be great for people that just want to swap out a battery.
- Lammy 6y agoI wonder if it is designed to dissipate some heat? Lithium fires are no joke.
- ChuckMcM 6y agoPersonally, I love the creativity here. Two things that strike me are that someone can build an "iPhone X replica" out of a bunch of commodity parts. I have a couple of older computer re-creations, a PDP-8, a PDP-11, and an IMSAI 8080, that were built as replicas using mostly off the shelf parts. So when someone 40 years from now is building an iPhone X replica for nostalgic people like me, it will be something like this perhaps. That said, as a nerd I am pretty dense when it comes to fashion and have never understood the "signalling" that goes on. Even when kids at school wore counterfeit iZod polo shirts to signal elite status? I could never figure that out. But I recognized that it was really important to some people that they be perceived as fashionable, and without the means to pay the prices resorted to fakes.
- cgijoe 6y agoThis post needs a (2018) label, as it is two years old.
- asyncscrum 6y agoProbably 9 years ago I bought a iPhone knockoff called the Sciphone. It made a barking sound when you received a text and there was no way to disable or change that. Horrible thing.
- nautilus12 6y agoIs there any more about of how extensive the data collection is on this phone is (it mentioned being able to read text messages and iphone passwords but I feel like there is more), and whether or not it can be used to tie in with data collection schemes of other more mainstream software coming from China? Doesnt that cross the line between counterfeiting and and espionage/surveillance techniques?
- tsjq 6y agoYes
- micropoet 6y agoThe typography in app store tells it's fake.
- mclightning 6y agoWhy are we even entertaining this story? Did tech community went so backwards? Flag this. It is not an iPhone X by any measure. Title is misleading.