
Review: A Counterfeit, $100 iPhone X - kharms
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qvmkdd/counterfeit-iphone-x-review-and-teardown
======
duxup
>For one, the sensor bar at the top that creates the dreaded “notch” doesn’t
exist on this phone. Instead, the notch has been lovingly recreated in
software.

Ok that's actually kinda adorable.

The software differences are amusing as someone had to just take a shot and
put out a sort of MVP of some of these features... or just do something else.

>The “Podcasts” app just opens YouTube.

>Apple Maps opens Google Maps.

Close enough!

The backdoors are interesting as... does anyone want to hack someone who buys
a $100 iPhone, I guess so?

~~~
jacobush
Presumably some end customer may pay close to iPhone X prices for the
counterfeit version. And regardless, when they logon, their Apple ID and
password can be harvested.

~~~
LyndsySimon
Exactly, which I presume is also why so much attention was paid to the
"onboarding" app.

The device doesn't need to fool the user very long to be effective - just long
enough to get them to buy it, and long enough to log in to their iCloud
account. Those are the two big points where value is extracted.

------
timrichard
> It said “Face Added,” and closed. I was then able to unlock the phone with
> my face. So was literally anyone else who put their face in front of the
> phone.

Not hotdog.

------
scandox
> Several of the stock fake Apple apps such as Compass, Stocks, Clock ask for
> “invasive permissions,” such as reading text messages. It’s unclear if this
> is a sign that the developers were mediocre or malicious, Evans wrote.

> “The mismash of default apps preinstalled on the phone I was given are
> horribly insecure (if not outright malware),”

In short a modern smartphone.

------
an4rchy
It's amazing how good it looks and yet is so cheap. Apart from the display and
Face ID, I wonder how much it would cost to source used iPhone parts, perhaps
even older version (iPhone 6 etc) and build out the internals for this phone.

Also, I'm curious, but if anyone has any insight, is this even profitable at
$100 for them or is there a some sort of loss leading play for data behind
such counterfeits.

~~~
Consultant32452
You may enjoy this video where a guy goes to Shenzen and tries to build an
iPhone 6s from parts. He claims it cost $300. Technically he spent a little
over $600 because he broke a lot of parts and bought the wrong parts in the
process, but if everything went perfectly it would be about $300. I think this
was created back when the 6s was the current model.

$300 claim
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KucQDXnKws](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KucQDXnKws)

build video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leFuF-
zoVzA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leFuF-zoVzA)

~~~
harveynick
I love stuff like this, but I think he left out a fairly important number: the
amount of time he spent making it, and the $ value he'd put on that time.

~~~
someonenice
When making a single phone, this effort counts (assume $20K). Once he is ready
for mass production, then this effort is negligible (divide the $20K among
100K phones) .

~~~
harveynick
Ye-es... but I'd argue that's not the proposition of the video. The claim is
"I made an iPhone for $300", but the reality id more like "I made an iPhone
for $300 of useful spend, $700 of wasted spend and $20,000 worth of my time".

The watcher might be tempted to take away "I can make an iPhone for $300," but
actually it's more like "I can make an iPhone for $300 and ~$5,000 of my
time".

Obviously the "$5,000 worth of my time" is actually the fun part fro some
viewers. If you're the right kind of maker it might even be worth $5,000 _to_
you.

------
zawerf
Kind of surprised by the amount of hardware and software engineering talent
that went into creating this counterfeit.

Is it really so lucrative that it beats applying those same talents at a real
job?

~~~
GuiA
Why do you assume this isn’t a real job (ie paid the rent and fed their
family) for the people who worked on it? And why do you assume that the people
who worked on it have access to what you consider a “real job”?

~~~
breadAndWater
Instead of counterfeiting, and operating beyond the boundaries of well
understood legalities, while deceiving users, and engaging in sketchy
malicious software practices, what if they were more well behaved?

What if they didn't create an obvious attempt to create a direct knock-off of
the latest iPhone? What if they created a comparable device to stand on its
own? What if they clearly labeled everything that the phone was really doing?
What if they weren't scraping every interaction he user has with the device?

What if they took all of that deceptive effort, and poured it into producing a
device that could be trusted, and took all of those efforts to deceive, and
instead poured that creativity into improving the fundamental device they
wished to create?

What if they made something they could put their names on, without inviting
all the consequences that their dubious behavior would surely result in, if we
knew who was behind this sort of thing?

What if they could admit to what they were doing, because it sought to benefit
their patrons, instead of posing obvious risks to anybody spending $100 on
their stuff?

~~~
gsanghera
What if they had access to the IP that is currently locked away by the likes
of Apple/Google? What if anyone who wanted to replicate a good design (and
improve upon it) were able to do so without restrictions, or fear of lawsuits?
Conversely, what if what we treat as the sacrosanct right to make profits over
a one-time invention (as if noone else could ever come up with a similar idea
on their own - while history has repeatedly shown otherwise) was applied
throughout history? Would even railways / electricity / simple things we take
for granted now - have been so widespread? Maybe we would be flying in
counterfeit airplanes.

~~~
atr2
>What if they had access to the IP that is currently locked away by the likes
of Apple/Google? What if anyone who wanted to replicate a good design (and
improve upon it) were able to do so without restrictions, or fear of lawsuits?

Then nobody would invest any money in releasing stuff and we would still live
in the stone age.

~~~
_Microft
Here's an interesting article about 19th century Germany when no copyright
laws existed yet:

 _The Real Reason for Germany 's Industrial Expansion?_

 _Did Germany experience rapid industrial expansion in the 19th century due to
an absence of copyright law? A German historian argues that the massive
proliferation of books, and thus knowledge, laid the foundation for the
country 's industrial might._

Found at [http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-
copyright-l...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-
law-the-real-reason-for-germany-s-industrial-expansion-a-710976.html)

------
dingo_bat
> They assumed that the device was likely insecure, and kept it in a faraday
> bag, which blocks all incoming and outgoing wireless signals, to keep it
> from potentially causing any trouble at their office.

What sort of "trouble" are they talking about here?

~~~
garmaine
Potentially it acts as a relay circumventing any local firewalls.

------
0x0
From the article's conclusion:

> So maybe this phone isn’t Apple’s iPhone X, but it is an iPhone X.

Ridiculous. If the phone can't run iOS apps (arm64 binaries compiled for
Darwin+UIKit) it's not even close. What a racket.

~~~
kk_cz
iPhones has become status symbols, at least in some socio-economic groups. In
this sense the functionality is not important - all that matters is the logo
on the back and visual appearance of the home screen. If it can make people
around you think that you have an iPhone, it's as useful as the real thing.

~~~
netsharc
Their (money-making) genius is also the redesign with every new version. Now
that the X has a notch, some people with iPhone 7's will think "Oh, that
person's iPhone has a notch, mine doesn't, I feel inferior."...

------
amelius
If some shady Asian company can build these for under $100, then why don't we
have a decent open-source phone yet?

~~~
StudentStuff
Cause throwing together a half-baked Android phone using the aged fork of
Android that Mediatek provides, plus a few sketchy APKs with no comments or
source is much easier than properly mainlining said fork of Android, then
shipping a phone based on it.

Turns out, making the software to do cool stuff is most of the cost of
building new products.

~~~
amelius
And on the desktop everything is easier?

~~~
Klover
Yes.

With your average Intel desktop almost everything is in the Linux kernel, you
don't have cellular, and you use UEFI or BIOS to boot.

With your average Android phone, you are lucky if you have kernel code. This
does not include drivers for most things, and the code is of such quality that
even when manufacturers try to update the kernel version they are having too
much trouble.

~~~
erikb
It's arguably the same. For Linux also people need to write the driver code
and mainline it. It's just that someone does it for most desktop parts we
would consider buying, but nobody does it for semi shady Taiwan hardware which
is mostly sold in China's countryside and Africa.

------
Bromskloss
> We disassembled the phone and asked security researchers to probe it to find
> out what it is. Verdict: It's wild.

I could have used a better summary. Now I had to read half the article anyway.

------
walrus01
Having seen a lot of these, I knew before clicking that it would be:

a) android skinned to look like ios

b) based on a mediatek reference chipset/rf baseband platform

c) riddled with buggy apps with huge security vulnerabilities

basically if you go to dealextreme, aliexpress, dhgate or a similar website.
search for android phones, find things that cost right around $70-100, they'll
all be very similar.

The more amazing part to me is that they actually bothered to duplicate a
lightning port rather than use microusb or usb-c for charging.

~~~
phito
Would they be good if you flashed a custom ROM on it?

~~~
milankragujevic
Not really, the MT6580 is so old it's practically dinosaur aged. 1GB of RAM is
bad, and 8 GB of storage is also pretty bad, give that it's split into 4 GB
for /system and 4 GB for /data. You could port a ROM for it, but there are no
kernel sources usually, and it's incredibly difficult to find any
documentation on the chipset and ROMs are practically non-existent. Even some
cheaper Qualcomm chipset phones don't have ROMs available, like Alcatel
phones, Nokia, etc., so if you manage to find a ROM, flash it and try it, but
beware of spyware if you didn't compile everything yourself.

------
joeblau
This reminded me of a time back in the early 2000's when I tried to skin
Windows to look like a OSX. I downloaded tons of stuff (themes, plugins,
etc...) to modify Windows to give it that Aqua look. I was able to get close
to the look, but the experience was clearly different. It's quite amazing to
see how much work went into skinning Android to look like iOS.

------
flyGuyOnTheSly
When the product literally becomes a piece of glass with a matte back on it...
branding (and counterfeiting) will become a big problem faster than any of
these companies are preparing for, I suspect.

~~~
remarkEon
I’m not so sure. As noted in the article, key iOS features were basically
nonfunctional or nonexistent. My impression is that most users would detect
this device to be fraudulent quite quickly.

Do you mean that the increased availability of these fakes could tarnish
Apple’s brand? I suppose we’d wind up in a situation where folks can only buy
Apple devices from Apple authorized dealers. “Exclusivity” seems already
thoroughly baked into Apple’s brand so I’m not sure this would actually hurt
them. Is this not how it already is?

~~~
flyGuyOnTheSly
>I’m not so sure. As noted in the article, key iOS features were basically
nonfunctional or nonexistent.

My friend bought a fake Rolex watch.

He knew it wasn't real gold, and that half of the complications did not
operate, but he still bought it and wore it.

There are enough people out there these days that see brands as style trends
imho and will do anything to "rock" them.

~~~
bitL
Wasn't the main purpose of Rolex a conversion to cash quickly anywhere in the
world when one is escaping the authorities that already managed to block bank
accounts etc.?

~~~
LyndsySimon
It's a purpose, yes.

------
spleeder
It doesn't have a notch. This makes it better than the real iPhone. Too bad
they added a software one.

~~~
duxup
>Too bad they added a software one.

I kinda like it if only because it is absurd.

It makes me wonder if we could make an all screen, every surface phone, and
then as styles change the "look" of the phone would change.

"Bezels are back with the latest software update!"

------
merinowool
I think this product would be aimed for children - just like you can buy toy
car, toy kitchen or toy furniture, there is toy Apple iPhone for kid to get
familiar with what adults are supposed to use.

~~~
anc84
100$ buys you a really nice Android phone.

~~~
grkvlt
For small values of "really nice", that is. A state-of-the-art Samsung or
Pixel phone is much closer to USD 1000 that USD 100 these days.

