China's iClone or I Have Seen the Future and It's Made in China
Cellphones, microchips, cars, even iPhones?there's virtually no high-tech Western product that China's cloners can't copy. Pretty soon, you might even prefer their work
By Dan Koeppel
by Mat Dartford: Photo by Mat Dartford
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The little gadget was bootleg gold, a secret treasure I'd spent months tracking down. The miniOne looked just like Apple's iPhone, down to the slick no-button interface. But it was more. It ran popular mobile software that the iPhone wouldn't. It worked with nearly every worldwide cellphone carrier, not just AT&T, and not only in the U.S. It promised to cost half as much as the iPhone and be available to 10 times as many consumers. The miniOne's first news teases-a forum posting, a few spy shots, a product announcement that vanished after a day-generated a frenzy of interest online. Was it real? When would it go on sale? And most intriguing, could it really be even better than the iPhone?
China's iClone | Popular Science
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