Fake iPhone, the hiPhone 5 arrives in China

Where else but in China can you find a fake Apple store that actually fooled customers as well as the store’s employees themselves who thought that they were working for Steve Jobs’ organization? It seems that the iPhone 5 has been cloned and released (!) even before the real deal is out – where it has been dubbed the hiPhone 5, give or take a ‘h’.

The hiPhone 5 will sell for a pittance of around $31 on China’s top e-commerce platform Taobao, which incidentally is part of the Alibaba Group. For those who feel a little bit heavier around the pockets, you can always fork out around $125 for a more “genuine” fake – now isn’t that one of the more interesting oxymorons?

The hiPhone 5 was constructed according to what is known about the iPhone 5 off the Internet, where it sports a thinner form factor alongside less rounded edges compared to the current iPhone 4 which is still quite a looker. Too bad this is an extremely light handset that gives the game away, featuring an extremely poor build quality in the same vein as that of a plastic toy – something the majority of pirated mobile phones “suffer” from.