Local Apple consulting firm inspects fake iPhone 3G bought on eBay
MacMedics, a Mac consulting and repair firm with offices in the Baltimore, Washington and Philadelphia area, tipped me off to the latest curiosity to hit their shop: A fake iPhone 3G that almost looks convincing, but not quite.
A customer bought it on eBay, thinking it was the real deal -- and quickly discovered it wasn't when he started handling it. Dana Stibolt, founder of MacMedics, took a video of the fake and explained in a blog post that the customer needs an authorized Apple service provider to inspect and document its fakeness, in order for the guy to try to get his money back from PayPal.
There's a good chance the fake came from somewhere in Asia -- just watch the vid below:
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Update: Dana tells me he'd never seen a fake iPhone before.
Comments
There's lot of fake iPhones all over the world. In Poland we have tons of ciPhones or siPhones which look quite similar. But the one you have is almost identical and it's called iPhone that's a reason to sue whomever manufactured it. According to Linux icon, it's chinese instant messenger called QQ what confirms it's chinese. The weird part is that it doesn't have chinese fonts, that's why there are squares everywhere.
Posted by: ddanecki | June 28, 2009 3:37 AM
hahaha this made us believe that the mac os is very simple that hackers could put it on a convicting iphone which fake thats one for hackers zero for apple
Posted by: haha | June 28, 2009 3:28 PM
I really have issue that you would allow the post above with its obvious 13-year-old-ish hacker language. Not to mention the sooo obvious idiotic misspellings. I came here from a post on Macintouch expecting something professional and while the article is very informative, allowing posts like that cheapens, lessens, and makes your site feel pretty inferior.
Sorry, Matt. I'm trying to balance giving people a chance to comment without being heavy-handed in what I choose to censor. I'm not quite perfect at it.... yet. Hope you come back. -gs
Posted by: Matt | June 29, 2009 4:01 AM
It's amazing how close-but-not-quite that knock-off is to the real iPhone. For the relatively tech-savvy or people who have already used an iPhone, the differences are obvious, but I'm sure there are thousands (millions?) who would get that fake iPhone and just assume that all iPhones are junk and switch back to BlackBerry.
Posted by: Stephen | June 30, 2009 9:26 AM
Even though it's a crappy phone, I would take some of the Accessories with my iPhone anyday. And the charger resembles a MacBook charger more than an iPhone one, it looks like the plug can be taken off and switched.
Posted by: Skip | July 3, 2009 9:05 AM