Beware the famous iPhone 5 killer – almost exact replica running Android. I won’t sing much about it – there’s enough praising crap posted by sellers all over the internet.
I’ll only say the quality is really good, the display is if not Retina, but at least a very good IPS. The interface is as close to iOS as possible, but Google Play Store works and all apps could be easily downloaded and installed. So its a great way for those who want to ditch iOS and get used to Android, or for those whose only requirement to a smartphone is beautiful icons, which is mostly the only product Apple makes. The phone uses the now-standard Apple Lightning cable for sync and charge, the connector is exactly the same two-sided one. Other iPhone accessories like charges, cases and screen protectors also fit perfectly. So the replica is really close to original, and the orthodox Android is always a good thing. By the way, the phone ships already rooted, no need to dance around with flashers. Hooray! There are minor annoyances with the interface, like sliders being actually buttons and making no sense sliding them. A barely noticeable lag exists when scrolling the desktop left to right, but it is really really a fragment of a second an may be a software issue, which could be probably fixed in a newer firmware. Well, new firmwares for Chinese phones are very rare events. Also when the device is locked – mind, locked – it takes about a second to wake up, which is actually quite common in the Android world. That isn’t really that much of a problem.
iPhone 5 32gb Android
MTK MT6589 Quad-Core ARMv7 Processor, 1.5 GHz
Google Android 4.2
GPS
58.6*123.8*7.6 mm
112 g
Retina 1136*640
3264å2448
1080p HD
1.3 720p
LED
2 Gb
32 Gb
WiFi (b/g/n), WiFi Direct
Bluetooth 4.0
In general, a very pleasing device – at a minimum price, you get 4 core processor, 2 gigs of RAM and 32 gigs of storage. But this is not my first day in this world. And by no means this is my first Chinese product. I can feel it with my guts: they’ve tried to screw me around. The first and obvious thing to check is the built in memory. For many years now, Chinese manufacturers have been skamming consumers with players and memory cards boasting 32Gb capacity, but in fact have about 4 gigs of real capacity, and all the rest is just null. This phone is not an exemption. The about page says it has 32 of storage and 23 of which is free. But a system check utility shows only about gig of system memory and about 7 on the sdcard, leaving us with about 8 gigs of total memory. Which is like 4 times less than the advertised 32. This is confirmed by the factory menu, which shows something about 2 gigs of the system and 7 gigs on the sdcard. The RAM is also far less than 2 gigs. Even though the sysinfo utility shows 1 gig, judging by the free memory there is only 512 megs. Which, once again is 4 times less than advertised. And the screen is not above 1000 pixels, but twice less. Talking about the sysinfo utility. It showed 4-core MT6589 processor, while the factory menu shows a very different processor – single core MT6575. So do we also get 4 times less cores? Let’s run a benchmark, which by the way warns us the processor info is fake. The benchmark results clearly show it is a single core, MT6575 processor. Which runs at 1 Ghz, not 2 Ghz.
Hardware : MT6575 (MT6589 is Fake!)
Model : iPhone5
Build number : ALPS.ICS2.MP.V1.20
Build date UTC : 20130131-062306
Android v : 4.1.5
Baseband v: MAUI.11AMD.W12.22.SP.V7, 2012/09/14 18:37
Kernel v : 3.0.13 (root@zonglibo-desktop) (gcc version 4.4.3 (GCC) ) #1 Thu Jan 31 14:19:03 CST 2013
Uboot build v : MAIN2.2.ubt.4498
LCD Driver IC : 1-nt35510_mipi
Also, there is no light and proximity sensor, even though the utility shows it exists. That’s why automatic brightness doesn’t work, and the proximity sensor is emulated by a bar in the upper part of the screen when a call is in progress. When you touch it with your ear, it switches off the touchscreen. So, what’s the conclusion? Well. it would be stupid to hope that at such a tiny price you would get top hardware. On the other hand, the storage is enough to save quite a few books, songs and movies, let alone apps. The processor power is enough to output graphics in the real display resolution, which is confirmed by nice interface flow. Overall, the device leaves very pleasant sensations, which is not true about the original Apple iPhone 5. Yes, you heard me right, I don’t like the original iPhone because of its closed nature and endless castrations, leading to a very limited functionality. And this Chinese creation running Android in quite nice from technical point of view, and aesthetically they are indistinguishable. So I’m quite pleased with the purchase. Well, it’s not exactly good that the manufacturer tried to deceive me about the device real specs, but I was kinda prepared for that. So if you ever plan to invest in a Chinese smartphone, get your sysinfo software ready to determine its real hardware.