Don’t be fooled !
You may came across very cheap iPhones on the internet, but most of those good looking deals are very dangerous. Chinese retailers often offer iPhone replicas for a price below $200 and they look like a real iPhone. Most of the retailers sit in shenzhen China, but the factories are mostly more far away from the city center. By the way, we did a factory tour video earlier click above to check it out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgIQz68Lo8Q
The reason why they are making clones is simple — they are cheap, and therefore affordable on the domestic market. On average, 20 percent of all consumer products in the Chinese
market are counterfeit, not talking about similar designs like in the car business. But why does China tolerate it ? Well China can’t crackdown on counterfeit goods
without putting most stores out of business. These are registered companies and they do pay tax, so if china would close all those companies, they would get way less tax and lose a massive amount of money. So would you cut your own leg off ?
If you wonder how such a fake iPhone looks and performs, then checkout our review video:
Where are they made ?
The smartphones get designed and produced in factories outside of the big cities and most of them are sold online from shenzhen. Well alot of big marketplaces have already removed
replica sellers from their website, and even Jack Ma, the founder and boss of alibaba and aliexpress, had called counterfeit goods a “cancer” and vowed to fight them. But are those clones as good as the real iphone ? and why are they so cheap ? is it just because of cheap labor in china ? No definitly not, you get what you pay for and those replicas are not even worth half the money you pay. Even though the outside differences are just some minor differences, you may don’t even see at the first look, those smartphonesuse very low end components. The best part is probably the display, which looks usually very good but has a lower resoultion. The chassis is a professional replica, but the aluminium used is usually less stable and tends to bend easily. Now you will think, that still does not excuse apples high prices.. Well lets dig deeper.
What’s inside ?
After I’ve removed the display unit, I could check out the battery. The real iphone 7 has a 1960mAh battery, while the fake one has a crappy low quality 1350mAh battery, with
which won’t evenget you a full day of battery life with normal use. Still not enough ? Now the motherboard. On the Iphone we have fast onboard storage making the iphone fast,
reliable and expensive. On the most replicas there is just one SD card inside for storage.. Well yes it can be replaced for a bigger one, but not a real benefit because the phone
is slow as hell.Now the biggest difference is the chipset. The Apple Iphone A10 chipset, one of the fastest on the marktet, costs in production around 27$,while the chipset in
this smartphone costs not even 1$. Chinese replicas are using cheap Mediatek chipsets. Mediatek is nothing bad, but their low end chips just suck, especially the MTK 6735 or 6580.
Regarding the performance, the fake iphone scores around 20k in antutu, while a real iphone scores more than 170k. Most people say they don’t need the full performance of the
iphone 7 and would be more than happy with the fake, but trust me, you won’t be happy with a phone that stutters while checking your facebook feed.
Also they save alot of money on the camera modules, resulting in a very poor image quality. The module in the iphone 7 costs roughly 20$ in production. On the fake iphone
it’s probably around a 1$ depending on what they find on the market. Usually the camera modules vary alot, they just grab the cheapest they can find on the market and this
results in a very bad image quality, also due to the bad software optimiziation.
You get what you pay for is true.
Now lets do the math. I found all things which i could find inside of the box on Alibaba. The headphones for $1, the cable for less than a dollar, the charger and the box itself.
Depending on the quantity you probably just spend 2-3$ on the box with the accessories. Now the phone, i found phones on alibaba with a very similar configuration for $40. For sure
the aluminum body is a bit more premium and probably more expensive, but i think the total costs of the clone are $40 to $45 or even below.
In most shops those replicas start at $140 to $150, resulting in a high profit on a low end phone that would usually retail for $60 to $70 maximum.
Now Are You Breaking The Law When You Buy Counterfeit Goods? Well it depends on your country.. but mostly If you are a tourist and you just buy one thing for personal use, there
won’t be a problem. If you buy like 10 and bring them home it’s no personal use anymore and it’s illegal. Also if you buy those phones online, they can stop your parcel, open it up and destroy it. This is what happened once to me and then i got a letter saying that “if they will catch me again, they are going to give me a big fine.. Also this case could maybe be reported to apple or the trademark holder for further actions..
The phone was gone, my money was gone and now they have me on the blacklist, so that is what can happen in the european union. But always make sure you check your legal laws, mostly one sample for personal use if you bring it from your holiday is no problem, but ordering it online is against the law.
Bottomline : All in all it’s not recommended to order counterfeit products online.
