Keepin' it real fake, part CIX: C-002 HiPhone ups the ante
By Paul Miller 
posted Feb 6th 2008 10:59AM
posted Feb 6th 2008 10:59AM
[Via Engadget Spanish]
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holy shit.
What's so holy about a semi-responsive touch screen, eh?
THis phone is PERFECT for windows fanboys. Pure classsssss.
Dax, I don't see where Windows "fanboys" come into the equation with this iPhone knockoff, but I can now clearly see where the Apple variety play in.
this phone is not on the market yet... it will be available after chinese new year... the actual name of the phone has not been decided yet, hiphone sounds pretty corny though... chinagrabber will have this phone for sale in several weeks here; http://www.chinagrabber.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWCATS&Category=174
update: we just checked with the manufacturer's and this is the HiPhone D800i iPhone Clone by Digitalrise... full specs and pictures here: http://www.chinagrabber.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=1531 also, it is only $219.99 shipped at chinagrabber
ya, i did some research and the C-002 is not 99%.... only the d800i comes close... check out the icons for example... the icons from the other chinese sites are all generic icons whereas the d800i's closely resemble the iPhone's... also the non-D800i are all only Dual-band -even though the say tri-band and even quad-band... there is simply no quadband hiphone out now and those who say there is are lying - meaning they will not work in the USA and will only work in Europe, UK. In short, the D800i is the closest clone yet and is the only phone that will work in the USA.
Is there any chance I can afford THIS version of the iPhone?
IIRC, the price is something like $239. And I got the impression from another site that it's 3G, although that was only an inference, so take it with a grain of salt.
The Chinese manufacturers are blatantly ripping off whatever the dominant seller is - I was in a Canal Street store the other day and was shocked to see MP3 players in the exact dimensions of the Apple iPod touch.
This copy right here is an unapologetically bad ripoff but, considering how poor At&t is as a network, if this thing offered high speed internet and cost less than $300 I'd probably buy one.
if it has copy and paste, then i'll trade in my iPhone for one.
Haha! Gotta love the "SIM" icon.
nice!
Awesome!
I'm impressed especially when he flipped the iclone.
At the website referenced in the video, this phone is selling for $239, and comes with a bunch of stuff: 2 batteries, Charger, USB Cable, Earphone, 512M T-Flash Card, User Manual, Phone Cover.
Love the apple on the splash screen, very classy.
That is really, really impressive. I didn't expect the UI to work as well as it did, then I figured it must not do auto-rotate, but it does. Even multi-touch! The response is markedly slower on the iPhone, but this could be due to cheaper hardware (to keep costs down) or just lack of refinement in the programming -- after all, they only had, what, 7-8 months to rip it off. Also I doubt the lists scroll in the same way, and this one probably doesn't have a proximity sensor to disable the screen when talking.
I wonder if this was in any way an inside job. I know the Chinese are great at making clones, but this must have been a serious effort in such a short timeframe.
Creative way of opening the phone up, Apple could learn from that :)
er, markedly slower *than* on the iPhone (look at where he zooms on photos). Still, downright amazing.
what you see is reverse engineering taken to the last step... Iphone was great for it's "new" fresh looks and interface as an innovation... but once people have access to it, they can always rip it open and look for cost cutting ways to reproduce a clone... *enters the Vii
I'm not convinced it's a real HiPhone. The interface and everything is from the iPhone. It even has the multi-touch screen & the apple logo as U turn it on.
At the end when he opens the back there is a cut in the editing, it could be a real iPhone up til that point and then a different phone when he takes the back off.
If it's real then it is the best copy ever, who would be able to tell the difference once it's in the case.
Trust me, it's not a real iPhone... as someone who finally decided to pick one up (mainly for email/web on the go and the unlimited data, as my other phone was costing me way too much) I can tell you that whilst close it lacks the fluidity of the authentic model, particularly in the media playback. Not bad work on a knockoff overall though.
It did have the exact same back on it before that cut you're talking about. For all you know all they did was rip the iPhone OS completely. Just customize it to work with their hardware.
There's a lot of extra space above the button on the front. Much more than the real iPhone. Otherwise, an excellent copy.
Ian, does this thing have coverflow?
Heaven forbid, if the software is just a rip, it should sync with iTunes? o_0
Better spent the extra $91 and get the T32 upgraded clone that runs Windows Mobile 6, then you make your own star trek phone UI.
Cost price is $159EA for 50 units
Cost price of the Windows mobile version is $250EA 50 units
so for about $150 more i can get a real iphone.... why would i want one that needs two batteries and is really slow and lame? anybody that thinks that this thing comes close to an actual iphone does not have an iphone. it looks nice, but it ain't no iphone... closer than other fakes, but still not close at all to the real deal...
It comes with two batteries, not needs two batteries
You're saying you could buy an iPhone instead, but you also say that people who like it must not have an iPhone? You don't have an iPhone!
How does the browser work? Does it even have one?
A bit of a blatant ripoff but it does demonstrate to Apple apologists that it is quite possible to produce a device with a replaceable battery.
Sure but once you you drop it phone gets into several peaces... and when you drop it several times those peaces does not fit together anymore, that's something that's good with iPods and iPhone.... they're rock solid and not like Nokia phones which tend to brake apart at any time!
And which Nokia phones are you talking about? The $10 ones? The N95 could kick the iPhone's ass any day of the week.
My Nokia 6630 has been dropped and broken apart literally hundreds of times, and always fits back together. The very act of splitting a phone into two parts absorbs considerable energy when dropped - saving the actual electronics from damage.
- Still no video recording ?
- Could've chosen a better going video...
*putting the battery back* - "SHUT UP BI*CH"
better song*
Don't fall for it. Besides the obvious video editing at key intervals when the user enters a command, me thinks they did one of two things:
- hard feed a signal from, you guessed it, an iphone sitting off to the side which is emulating the 'fake' commands entered by the user. The biggest give away here is when he pinches the image. For one, he's not even doing it right (using fingernails instead of finger pads) and the delayed response is laughable.
OR
- your actually looking at, you guessed it, an iphone... unlocked and modded to be dumbed down for the purpose of showing pseudo-functionality. What you get after ordering one, however, will have few if any of this functionality.
Not true... I have one. It has the same features as showed.
the ugliest iPhone ever until now!
opps! I mean iPhone clone.
@Drew,
Where did you see the T32 clone running Windows Mobile 6? I didn't see it on Dragonkicks.
thanks..
Apparently this is the iPhone special edition "with conscience, and user friendly with the removable battery and memory card"
See, Steve, it can be done, so make us an iPhone with user replaceable batteries!!! I don't care if its a few mm thicker.
If this iphone manages to sell at $199 then we'd know just how much Apple is making.
It is obvious IP (Intellectual Property) has been thrown out of the Window, but I think we have all to agree, these guys are fu_king good at this.
DAMN!
"If this iphone manages to sell at $199 then we'd know just how much Apple is making."
you're right, because that's *just as good* as the real thing. you know, with the built in 8gb drive, and great video processing.
hahah. Don't get me wrong, i'm impressed that they went to such lengths to try to clone the thing, but really
- what a turd.
I would never buy an iPhone, largely because I hate Apple. But that thing I would buy. That was a fantastic copy of the iPhone, I was thinking they wont do multi-touch, or rotate, but they did. It shows that Apple's main selling points multi-touch isn't that much of a biggie as a Chinese knock-off can do it. Apple led people to believe that it was amazingly complex and expensive.
That seems pointless.
If you'd never buy an iPhone because you hate Apple, then half the people you run into would think it's a real iPhone anyway, so it would be no different from having the real thing -- except you'd have a copy with limited functionality.
The other half of the people you run into would think you're a poseur.
If you don't like Apple, but one of the many other smartphones on the market, not one that makes you look like an idiot who got conned.
This way I am sticking it to the man...I would make sure everyone knew it was a fake, probably by wearing a T-Shirt.
Apple never led anyone else to believe anything... just you. They sold a phone with a UI everybody wanted, never telling anyone how complex it was. Much like the early Macs ripping a hole in the PC world, it's a case of sour grapes.
I don't really like Apple. I mean, I like it, but I can't like it for professional reasons :)
however, I live the iPod (any) and that didn't stop me getting one. Probably, if would had a better response, I could be interested to the clone, but so far I'm stick to my original one.
$239, but if you go out and buy an 8GB micoSDHC (if this thing even supports the HC variant), you're almost back to the price of a real iPhone.
http://cgi.ebay.com/microSD-Mobile-Memory-Kit-8-GB-miniSD-8GB-SD-by-SanDisk_W0QQitemZ290202761250QQihZ019QQcategoryZ18871QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
And that's a lot faster than internal memory.
Exactly!
And that's how they make the price soooo attractive compared to the iPhone!
btw...Meizu must be crying now.
No, the Meizu will come with 16GB of memory for $400.
@ StevieMB, it's come down quite a bit I see.
Still $80 with shipping added to the $239 for the phone plus some shipping I'm sure, would put it at $319 plus shipping. And all that is if this phone even supports SDHC. That's a lot of cash to risk on some no name manufacturer for something that would be similar to the original that's only $80 more and you can trust to have some sort of quality control on their flagship product.
Hmm, I'm not sure which one I would prefer, the knockoff or the iPhone. The iPhone isn't unlocked, doesn't have a removable battery, and doesn't have dual SIM, but that is a tough choice. That microSD card isn't SDHC.
Actually, the 8gb card is SDHC. Look at the photo. There no standard microSD cards produced at that capacity, hence, the HC. Unlock not a big issue to work around except for phones with the most current bootloader, and I'm sure that will be figured out soon enough. Features are continually being added, and 3rd party apps are a big plus. I doubt that'll be the case for the hiphone.
Where are you from ?
At the other side of the world, sim cards are dirt cheap (prepaid). I know here in the US prepaid is not cost-effective. So having 2 sim cards are nothing, just like how some of us here have more than 1 TVs or cars.
And it's very helpful to have 2 networks in 1 phone, cause sometimes (or places) AT&T drop calls like f***, that's when Verizon comes in-handy and vice versa.
Has someone just used MS paint to put the white square on the button?....
it's great for business users who have both a work and a personal number, but don't want to carry around two separate phones with them
Anyone actually ordered one of these? If I have verizon, without a sim-card will it still function?
Also, Drew you mentioned the T32... know of any place to buy one in single quantity?? (Not 50 - cause I have no use for that).
ha.
If you have Verizon, none of these knock-off phones from China will work. They are all GSM.
Learn a little more about cell phone technology before you venture into the world of unsupported, knock-off devices from unknown Chinese manufacturers. Or don't and learn the hard way.
does it do MMS?
doubtful. If it uses a SIM card, it's probably designed to run on GSM networks.
Fake is right... looks like a video edit to me. If not, they ripped OS X mobile and won't be around long once Apple sicks their layers on it. If it IS real though, it looks Chinese... what carriers would support it in the states and how would I know what I'm clicking on? LOL I'd rather pay another $100 and be able to read English on the screen.
Dual Sim feature is great if your work requires you to travel to different places. This is especially true for working men and women that have to travel to China a lot. so you would have a sim chip for where ever you live.. and another one in China. My uncle for instance lives in HK but do a lot of business in mainland China. So instead of swapping sim chip every time he travels to mainland (telecom service in HK is different from that of mainland).. he would just have a phone that supports dual sims.
That's so lame words can't begin to express it.
I hope Apple sues them so far into the ground that everyone involved in the project wished they'd never heard of an iPhone.
China really needs crack down on all the cloning outfits that operate in their country.
That's why I'll be buying this instead of the real iPhone. Stupid Apple locking it's device is costing tons of hardware sales. Their current business model for the iPhone is the responsible for many people buying knockoffs.
I live in Brazil so no AT&T + iPhone for me (neither soup)... Hello HiPhone!
It's probably the closest clone so far, but watch the movie. Compared to the iPhone, the clone's UI is slow, stuttery, only semi-responsive, media playback is choppy, like 10 fps, you'll see a number of times the guy had to touch things more than once to get them to respond, there was a distinctive delay when sliding the volume bar, and a whole bunch of other little things like that.
The fluidity and responsiveness of the iPhone's UI is one of the best reasons to get an iPhone. That's one of the things that sets it apart from all the other phones on the market, it was the first phone to really get the UI right. So if you're not getting Apple's UI, then why even bother getting a clone? Just get an N95 if you don't care how bad the UI is.
Yeah, you're right. The most amazing thing to me about the iPhone first time I used it is that it actually works the way it's advertised, amazingly fluid.
If I wanted a stuttering, freezing, unreliable phone I'd go back to Windows Mobile. I don't get the point of having a clone that's not really much cheaper and not as good as the original. There are other options on the market. If this thing was $99 I'd see the point. For $239+ memory, you just overpaid to look like a poseur.
I agree 100%. The response is really slow on this hiphone. I have an iphone and what made me fall in love with it and selling a windows mobile device after 2 days, was the iphone's fast response and reliability.
I just WISH that the iphone was not locked so i can upgrade my iphone with no hassile :(
We don't have an AT&T network in my country so i have to use an unlocked iphone for the time being, but i am waiting on the google phone or android OS to surface and maybe i will ditch the locked iphone for some freedom ;)
Lets you pick & choose which to use, and it's handy for international travellers.
looks good, but they fail to mention if there is any built-in memory for $239; 2GB, 4GB? and what is the resolution of the camera?
Is that a proprietary headphone cable I see in the pictures on http://www.dragonkicks.com/product_info.php?cPath=908&products_id=7473? WTF???
The big question is- does it do A2DP...
I think it is micro USB...
That's definitely a Canon Digital Ixus I can see in the reflection. It's like reflectoporn but so much better.
Are there any data plan options out there that beat the AT&T/iPhone $20/month unlimited plan?
T-Mobile Unlimited Data for $20. It also gets you access to their Hotspots around the USA.
There's also a $5.99 Unlimited GPRS T-mo service but only Port 80 and the port for email works.
The 5.99 plan isn't just GPRS, it's EDGE too. It's mainly for non-smartphones. T-Mobile opened up a port though for Nokia phones and you can use the settings with WM5 and WM6. I use it all the time. Google Maps, email, exchange, opera, minimo, web browsing.
Works great
... so it's actually BETTER than the iPhone?
Is that a screen protector or did someone sneeze on the phone? Shitty picture.
Impressive copy but I could never get on with this phone because the UI was soooo slow and unresponsive, especially during media playback or photos.
The thing I do most with my iPhone is browse. I'm always looking up information on it and passing time when waiting or travelling and trying to do it with this much lag would drive me nuts.
Stick a graphics chip in this!
PS... I bet a few kids are going to be disappointed when one of these turns up under their tree this year because their parents didn't know the difference =]
anyone notice that their site sells sneakers? Rare Jordans, wtf?
Another "Half Baked" idea...?
Has anyone noticed that it doesn't do Wifi? On the site it states on the C001 doesn't support GPS or Wifi and no mention of Wifi or GPS for the C002 either.
Those of you who keep talking about how we might now "know what apple really pays" for the iphone must have no idea how businesses work. There's more than just the cost of building the thing. You have to pay for R/D, continued software work, retail costs (employees, buildings, ect). There's a lot more to it than just paying for the hardware. I'm not saying that Apple is just breaking even by any means, but at the end of the day they are a business and making a profit off of what you make/sell is kind of the point, right?
Also, these things are total pieces of s**t. The interface looks about as stable as the Acer desktop GUI of old. If you want an iPhone, buy an iPhone, but this thing is nowhere near an iPhone. It is what it is... a cheap imitation. If this company made an imitation MacBook Pro that looked "almost" the same and had an OS that looked sorta like OS X would you buy it? Hell no! Why? You would stay away knowing that it's probably some form of Windows, probably 3.1 or '95, with a GUI redesign.
...oh boy...
I'd like to say. wow. Not bad. I'd buy one. The camera is weak, VGA (640x480, source: http://www.specialphones.eu/en/store/10174). and microSD doesnt seem to be SDHC, but can't be verified. So.. storage sucks (no onboard storage? wth)
However, its not locked down... to a carrier..
I wish they would open source the OS or the phone, so we could mod it. then i'd buy it.
Oh the day i dream to leave my Samsung Katalyst (pretty, but utterly crippled) for something with a nice form, and open source factor (Neo1973..maybe after a few hardware upgrades)
:(
Dido? Oh...Eminem..even weirder..
You could have two phone lines in one device.
User replaceable batteries and a mem slot, hint hint Apple! That way you wouldn't have to sell us a replacement or replacement service when the battery stops holding a charge or a new model when you run out of storage.
The blatant disregard bordering on distain for originality in these forums is shocking.
Thank you for being one of the few people here who make sense. I too am shocked.
To me, this just highlights Apple's brilliance. Sure, anyone COULD have created a multi-touch, pretty UI, keypadless cellphone, but no one but Apple DID. Apple doesn't so much make revolutionary hardware as wrap existing hardware in a revolutionary user experience.
- Jasen.
And the iPhone couldn't have a removable battery? Fuck you Apple. Not everyone can afford to replace their gadgets every year or send them in to you for an unnecessary repair.
it's great for business users who have both a work and a personal number, but don't want to carry around two separate phones with them
Haha shame, they one upped Apple with the dual sim and removable battery. I would buy that ting if it was actually as responsive and fast as the iPhone. And with english of course.
It might be more responsive if the guy in the video actually clipped his fingernails. An iphone-style touchscreen requires skin contact, not a fingernail.
Haha ew.
Please visit,
http://www.eemobi.cn/mobile/13/1212/4753.aspx
The various sites describing it are inconsistent about whether it is quad-band or available in two different tri-band configurations.
I'll be curious to see how widely available it is in Beijing later this spring when I am there (and looking for a dual-SIM card phone which supports Chinese language SMS
Removable battery? Man, I'm almost sold. Too bad it's a knockoff.
Sorry, I don't know how I missed that.
If you're travelling a lot, it means you can buy prepaid SIMs or even plans in other countries, then keep them both in all the time and switch to whichever one gets you the best deal where you are.