What if you were in a bar, and someone showed you an iPhone and said it was only 25 pounds?  AND then the things actually worked?? As well as common IPhone apps?  Well, clearly its a rip off copy, but still.. the things was working!!  And running Java on top of that?  Well according to Steve Cassidy on PC Pro (pcpro.co.uk) this happened.  Well, he didn’t buy the iphone copy, only saw it for a bit, but close enough.

Seems there are a number of these clones running around, commonly referred to as the SciPhone. Although the post was interesting, (and I really want to check one of these out), it was the comments that really got me thinking.  So lets say you can find for around 30 quid, around $50 US or so.  My first thought was, no way.. You cannot produce them cheap enough.  Well based on the comments, that is not the common opinion. Hit up Ebay for the SciPhone i68 and there are quite a few.  And check the specs.  Bluetooth, Color Screen, Dual SIM, GPRS, EDGE, Java Enabled, MP3 Player, Touchscreen, USB and 3m camera.

Now just to be clear, THIS IS NOT AN IPHONE!  Thus the iphone(ish) apps are just copies running, as best I can tell, some variant of windows mobile. But that being said, its pretty amazing that you can get something this close for so cheap with some aspects that are actually better. Really makes me wonder what will happen when the Andriod clones come out, which wont be clones because the OS is free.  Now that does not mean there will not be ‘rip offs’ like the one in the PC pro story, but I have a feeling we are going to see so really cool phone for REALLY cheap in the next year.

So would I pay around $35 US for a copy?  Sure, just for the heck of it.  Just not through Ebay.  I would have to see it, hold it, and make sure it worked.  I would recommend the same to anyone else.

£25 iPhone down the pub

Steve Cass