Motherboard Reviews a Counterfeit iPhone X

Jason Koebler and Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, writing for Motherboard:

The phone looks like an iPhone X. It has the same form factor, most of the same detailing, no home button, the same volume rockers and side buttons, a working Lightning port, and the same speaker holes on the bottom of the phone. It also has pentalobe screws on the bottom of the device, just like an iPhone. […]

It quickly became clear this isn’t iOS, though. For one, the sensor bar at the top that creates the dreaded “notch” doesn’t exist on this phone. Instead, the notch has been lovingly recreated in software. The device feels sluggish and underpowered while switching apps. The camera is clearly kinda blurry.

But still, if the phone isn’t an iPhone, it isn’t obvious what it actually is. Many of the apps look identical to their iOS versions. The calculator and stocks apps are seemingly identical to those in iOS. The camera menus and interface look the exact same as the one in iOS. The settings menu looks close-to-identical and has many of the same settings you’d find on an iPhone. The Mail app is the best approximation; I don’t use the default Mail app on my own iPhone, but the setup process and functionality seem from an end-user point-of-view as basically the same as the real thing.

This counterfeit seems wild, especially that it uses a Lightning port. But it’s pretty easy to tell it’s a fake. The display clearly doesn’t go corner to corner (i.e. there’s a chin and forehead). And though someone spent a lot of time recreating bits of iOS and either copying or painstakingly recreating iOS’s icons, the OS is using Roboto as the UI typeface, not San Francisco. (Look at the screenshot from Settings with the big bold “Settings” header — the lowercase “e” and “g” are the biggest tells that it’s Roboto, not San Francisco.) If they were willing to steal the icons, why not steal the font?

I’d love to see one of these things myself. If there are any readers in Shenzhen who can obtain one of these for me, please get in touch.

★ Tuesday, 24 July 2018