A nice set of iPhones icons that look rather realistic created by janosch500.  It comes with the .PSD file, so that you can customize to your own. 

Link

Not so long ago, I came across this nice little iPhone clone in China, and was intrigue by it.  I took it home for a price more than half the Original phone.  This glamour phone of mine had an awfully short life.  In just about a month, I drop my Canon A95 camera on top of the phone screen, and Bam, there goes the screen.  The entire phone still functions, and the screen are still clickable.  But half the screen is blank and the other half is hazy.  The CiPhone has been reduced to a nice looking paper weight.  Fortunately, the functions still operate, so I can still receive calls and the camera still works, which is good, cause the phone makes a great web cam.  It was a cheap glamour phone, and now it has been upgraded to a very expensive paper weight and web cam.  Its interesting how karma works, you never know when you have to pay back.  It would be nice to enjoy the phone a little more, but then again, it is better to pay back now than later.  I guess this is what you get for ripping off Apple.

One of the most formidable rule of shopping is not to settle on the first price you see.  I was looking for a skin for my iPhone, and was browsing at one of the IT mall at Hua Qiang Bei.  As I was going up the escalator on the first floor, I spotted the item I wanted, it was RMB 35 for one, with a simple question,’can it be cheaper’, the price drop to RMB 30.  It was a little more than what I was willing to pay for a piece of rubber.  So I soldiered on to the 4th floor and came across another shop, with many more color choices and the price was RMB 15.  With much haggling, the price remained the same.  So I bought two, for the price that I would pay to get one on the first floor.  This is why, never settle for the first price you see.  You never, know, it might be much cheaper just a few floors up.  Oh, by the way, pink is for my wife, so don’t get any funny ideas.

Yes, you got it right, I bought this glamour phone for just a little over four hundred ringgit.  I bought it over at Hua Qiang Bei in Shenzhen and it got one year warranty.  I was amaze by the feature this little gadget pack and how it looks and works.  The photo viewing works fine with pinching zooming capability.  The music player goes to album view when the phone is tilted.  This is something that other models could not do.  The cheapest I’ve seen starts at RM3xx and all the way to this model RM4xx.  I found out on the web that this phone’s name was CiPhone and it was a fake that gets as close to the real thing as possible.  Just search for CiPhone at youtube and you can see a wealth of video about this phone.

Out of the box, the device came with a sleve, earphones, charger, usb cable and a user manual.  All looks like the real thing.  You can check out a video I made unpacking this thing.  There are so many “iPhone” models over at Hua Qiang Bei, All the model except this one supports dual sim card and they comes with two batteries.  However they are much thicker and the dimension are much bigger.  But they have much more functions, some could even change song when shake, like the sony handphones when it first introduced. 

There are a couple of things that might turn you off, first there seams to be a lag on this phone, you will notice it on my video.  Secondly, the phone battery indicator can go up and down, especially if we let the phone hibernate, the next time the phone wakes up, you will notice the battery indicator shifts up a little.  This phone only supports single sim card, while other models support dual cards. Lastly, there seams to be a problem with the phone where after some time, the music player would reset the phone whenever I click on the music player icon.  The shop guy first says it was virus, then he said the mp3 format not compatible, which is all loads of BS.  Somehow the Chinese Songs that came with the phone seams to be fine.  So there goes, want perfect working beautiful iPhone, stay away from fakes.  if you dont mind this, then, it is a cheap glamour phone for you. 

China Iphone from Kew L. Ang on Vimeo.

My short shoot on the four hundred ringgit glamour phone I just bought. Poor shoot quality prevent me from going further, especially on dwelling into the operating system and how it looks inside. I recently found out that this phone was called ciphone and you can find tons of video about it in youtube. This was supposedly the best copy of the real thing. I have some qualms on this phone and will share them later.