Entertainment Newsline

Craig Evans debuts today at EN with this week discussing a brand new Chinese made phone being released onto the market this week which may look familiar…

Following the heavily anticipated release of the iPhone 3G, Chinese manufacturers have been cashing in on selling cloned replicas of the worlds most desirable mobile phone.

With thousands of people unable to get their hands on Apple’s latest gadget because they are not due an upgrade, or do not have a contract with O2, the Chinese replica market is booming.

The newest of these Frankenstein-phones is the Sciphone i68, which can be used virtually anywhere in the world and with any sim card.

eBay recently reported that unlocked iPhone 3G handsets were being sold for as much as £500 each, so it is a scary prospect that the clone costs around £80 with delivery included.

And this phone is not inspired by the iPhone, it had the same outer shell, the same user interface, touch screen and supports most of the same software.

There are hundreds of companies popping up selling these fakes, some even being cheeky enough to carry the Apple logo on them.

But this is of course a legal blackspot that Apple is aware of and already beginning to fight back against.

Only last month a UK stockist of one of the Chinese replica phones, Digital Playworld, was shut down.

The company’s managing director Simon Rimmer said that Apple bosses “came at me all guns blazing, [with] big bully boy tactics.”

After a short legal battle Rimmer was forced to settle out of court, paying a contribution to Apple’s legal fees as well as giving them all of his stock that resembles any of Apple’s products.

He consequently is claiming to be broke.

But that is not to say that some of the most well recognised telecommunications companies in the world are not creating similar models.

The soon to be released Nokia N96 carries a similar design to Apple’s product, and most of the same tools and gadgets, minus the Apple logo of course.

Samsung have already released their take on the iPhone with a model they are calling Instinct. The Apple inspired handset is fully touch screen and the user interface too smacks of the iPhone.

And it does not seem likely that Apple will be suing them any time soon.