iPhone Nano: Chairman Mao Remix
Monday, 24 August 2009
Leave it up to the Chinese to achieve the impossible: remix a product that is only rumored to exist in the first place.
Actually, it is pretty common for knock-offs to hit the market before the real deal, suggesting that the iPhone Nano is under production. This shouldn’t be a shock since Apple filed a patent for the iPhone nano a couple months ago.
All that being said, I’d like to confess my obsession with silly knock-offs. This one isn’t terrible in some respects, and pretty terrible in others. Let’s have a look shall we?
iPhone Nano Unboxing: One semi-impressive thing about this knock-off is all the crap it comes with. It comes with two batteries total (one is already in the iPhone-esque device) and a battery charger (not just a phone charger) so you can charge one battery while using the other. There's also a sweet carrying case with some cool Chinese characters and the part number: WJK-639, along with headphones, sync cable, etc. This appears to be manufacturered by a company called Daxian, judging by the manual.
iPhone Nano Unlock Screen: So far so good kinda, except the font is pretty different. Unlocking and answering phone calls can be a tad tricky unless you put your mind to it; the touchscreen isn't quite as sensitive as the real iPhone.
I haven't done too much research into it, but I'm guessing there isn't an App store for fake iPhones. So what you see is what you get with this. At least there are like 10 pages of Apps, although hardly any of them are useable. The phone app is called 'calling'. The browser is an Internet Explorer symbol which is humorous in and of itself, but I'm dubious as to the authenticity of the license.
Unfortunately, even though I had my friend change this into English mode, most Apps go Chinese on you once you get into them, especially Apps called 'Fun' and 'Fire' and 'Horse.'
The coolest thing about this phone is the dual SIM card ability. This is especially cool to the Chinese travelling business man that wants to use the same phone in two International locations, like Hong Kong (an island formally a Province of the UK) and Shenzhen (Mainland China) - just like the two SIM cards installed here. The fake iPhone's app menu even has an easy one-touch selection of which SIM card slot you'd like to utilize.
Bottom Line:
You really get what you pay for with this phone (about $400 RMB which comes out to around $60 USD). You are probably not going to want this as your main phone because of how unresponsive and inaccurate the touchscreen is. If you type anything wrong, you’ll have to start over and delete the whole thing because you’ll never be able to drop the cursor down in the right place with your finger. Functionally, not a great phone. Souvenir-wise, don’t know if I could have asked for anything better.
No. 1 — November 21st, 2009 at 8:32 am
How do you get the back cover to open to insert the sim cards?
No. 2 — December 2nd, 2009 at 6:24 pm
andrea– to open the back cover check out this post on how to open the back cover. since Palm Pre is currently on Sprint only and pretty soon with Verizon, which are PCS carriers, it will not utilize a removeable SIM card, probably ever.