Do Knock-Off Phones Deserve their Unsavory Reputation?

[Windroid]

There are cheap Android phones available that are meant to look like more popular brands (most notably iPhones). My understanding is: Those knock-off phones are looked down upon. But is that unsavory reputation really deserved? If you make a phone with the same dimensions and all as an iPhone (for example), then iPhone cases and many other iPhone accessories will work with it.

To be clear: I'm talking about knock-offs, not counterfeits! When an Android phone has an Apple logo on the back, when it reports in the settings that it runs iOS, etc.: That's unacceptable.

 

[ocnbrze]

There are cheap Android phones available that are meant to look like more popular brands (most notably iPhones). My understanding is: Those knock-off phones are looked down upon. But is that unsavory reputation really deserved? If you make a phone with the same dimensions and all as an iPhone (for example), then iPhone cases and many other iPhone accessories will work with it.

To be clear: I'm talking about knock-offs, not counterfeits! When an Android phone has an Apple logo on the back, when it reports in the settings that it runs iOS, etc.: That's unacceptable.

knock offs? not sure what you mean. never seen or heard of a "knock off" phone. off brand phones yes. what do you consider to be a knock off phone?

 

[mikedt]

There are cheap Android phones available that are meant to look like more popular brands (most notably iPhones). My understanding is: Those knock-off phones are looked down upon. But is that unsavory reputation really deserved? If you make a phone with the same dimensions and all as an iPhone (for example), then iPhone cases and many other iPhone accessories will work with it.

Having seen and tried many of these counterfeits, clones, replicas, and knock-offs , as they're commonly available here. It's basically a crapshoot as to what you might get, from something that's truly awful, to mediocre. Also it can be good luck if it will work with your particular carrier in your country, as most are 2G or 3G only, or if it lasts more than a few weeks due to poor quality.

If a replica device is made to the same dimensions of say an iPhone 14 or something, then iPhone cases and screen-protectors might fit it.

Have look at the SMOOREZ channel on YouTube, as he's reviewed and taken apart many replica, counterfeit, and knock-off devices.

https://www.youtube.com/@SMOOREZ/videos

 

[Windroid]

counterfeits

As I said: Counterfeits are another matter! If the phone was programed to outright lie to you, rather than merely having the look and feel of one of the bigger brands: It is not to be trusted. I would presume that a counterfeit phone came with malware installed by the manufacturer. I'm not usually one for throwing away working computers (including smartphones), but counterfeit phones are too untrustworthy to keep.

 

[mikedt]

As I said: Counterfeits are another matter! If the phone was programed to outright lie to you, rather than merely having the look and feel of one of the bigger brands: It is not to be trusted. I would presume that a counterfeit phone came with malware installed by the manufacturer. I'm not usually one for throwing away working computers (including smartphones), but counterfeit phones are too untrustworthy to keep.

OT: pedantry.

Same thing isn't it? Where "counterfeit" is formal, and "knock-off" is informal. That's what I use and teach.

See also:
fake, forgery, copy, reproduction, replica, imitation, likeness, lookalike, mock-up, dummy, substitute, fraud, sham; informal phoney, pirate, knock-off, rip-off, put-on, dupe.
(source Oxford Thesaurus for "counterfeit" noun)

 

[Windroid]

There's a big ethical difference between an imitation and a counterfeit! A counterfeit is, by definition, a lie. With a counterfeit: The manufacturer is attempting to deceive you. It's true that all counterfeits are imitations, but not all imitations are counterfeits.

In other words: It is possible to manufacture a phone with the same dimensions as an iPhone, and a similar appearance, without attempting to deceive the buyer into thinking that he's buying an iPhone. Make it clear that it's Android, don't put the Apple logo on the back of the phone, etc., and it's not fraudulent. No one's being lied to; the customer knows what he's buying.

 

[Hadron]

I have a colleague who used a copy Note phone for years, it cost him very little and it worked fine.

But as Mike says, others get very bad experiences. Something that's been made to copy the look of a big brand phone to the level of getting the dimensions the same may differ from the outright counterfeit only in that they didn't put the original brand's name on the case. Which also means that I wouldn't assume that anything the vendor (or the system Settings) tells me about the phone is true. Caveat emptor when you deal with these.

On the linguistic point I understand the distinction you are making between "knock off" and "counterfeit", though they overlap in formal meaning since "knock off" as in "copy" includes and frequently implies illegal copying, and they also overlap in common usage. So if someone told me that a watch from brand X was "a Rolex knock off" then I'd understand it the way you mean (they aren't pretending it's a Rolex, but they've copied the design to a significant degree). But if someone told me that a stall was selling "knock off Rolexes" I'd assume they meant counterfeits (or even stolen goods, since in UK English to "knock off" can mean to steal). So if your first post hadn't explained your meaning I would not necessarily have realised you were making that distinction.

 

[mikedt]

In other words: It is possible to manufacture a phone with the same dimensions as an iPhone, and a similar appearance, without attempting to deceive the buyer into thinking that he's buying an iPhone. Make it clear that it's Android, don't put the Apple logo on the back of the phone, etc., and it's not fraudulent. No one's being lied to; the customer knows what he's buying.

Well symantics asside. As for the actual devices, if it does have an Apple logo on the back or not, I don't think it makes any difference, it's still a crapshoot as to what you might get. Anyone can go to a back-street OEM in Shenzhen, and say "Make me something that looks like an iPhone 14." and they might reply "Do you want them marked with Apple logos or something else?" This doesn't even have to be done in a factory, and I've actually seen the final assembly of fake iPhones been done in a hotel bedroom!

There's "off-brand" devices of course, from makes that nobody's heard of (outside of China), that are NOT imitating or counterfeiting any of the major brands, like Apple, Samsung, Huawei etc.

 

[mikedt]

FWIW this could be what you might be getting with an unbranded knock-off iPhone. Bought from Wish or AliExpress, etc.
Once the back was removed, it revealed nothing inside apart from a metal weight.
Probably iPhone cases and other accessories would fit it.

#SMOOREZ

Their unsavory reputation is very much deserved here.

 

[nickdalzell]

If you mean the infamous 'Welcome' devices and other cheap wannabe Samsungs from Aliexpress and Wish.com, they won't give Android a very good impression with slower performance, and then there's the dodgy apps that might be put into the system that can transmit your data to god-knows-where. I wouldn't trust my financial details to a Welcome device. But to use it as a burner or dumb phone in an emergency? maybe.

There were times when many knock offs preloaded Cheetah Mobile malware into the phones. So buyer beware. You get what you pay for.

The YouTube channel Smoorez goes into further details about these things. Most of the time it's just a very fancy phone that looks modern and might cop the One UI or iOS look but have outdated specs and sometimes outdated builds of Android and no support for VoLTE, but other times they got spyware built in.

 

[lajmonline]

There are almost no counterfeit smartphones in smartphones. OEM phones do exist, but they are no longer like the previous era of feature phones.

 

[Hadron]

If you think there are almost no conterfeit smartphones you must have not looked very deeply.

I've not seen one recently, but we used to get a lot of posts about odd things like phones reporting a lack of storage even though the usage was only a fraction of what the capacity should be. Then you ask them to post the baseband details and their phone turns out to be based on a different SoC than the model it claims to be uses, i.e. it's a counterfeit and none of the hardware is what it says it is.

If you buy from reputable outlets the number of counterfeits is small. But in other places they definitely exist.

 

[nickdalzell]

There are actual fake Samsung phones that to the untrained, look pretty close enough to fool anyone. They can even cop One UI and apps and then they go deeper and fake specs by editing files such as build.prop and others to make the phone's 'about phone' section lie about the RAM, storage, and CPU cores. Some even have fake cameras posing as a multi-camera system with the only real camera being very low quality like 5 MP or less. Some even fake the Android version and easter egg. There are a ton out there that look like they're running Android 12 or 13 but they're just heavily-themed versions of Android 6 or 8. Some aren't even LTE capable, relying on outdated 3G and 2G. Some go farther and use stolen IMEI numbers.

Check out Smoorez on YouTube for more info.