iPhone Clones - Cect M88

friendface

EDIT: Could one of the Mods move this to Mobiles & PDA please. Didn't mean to post in Gadgets

I'm sure there have been a number of threads on this topic but, having purchased one of these phones recently, I felt I had to share my experience with them. There's a lot of ambiguity in relation to the naming of these devices so sometimes it is hard to tell exactly what you are going to get. From my experience, I found there are really two breeds of clone; the low-end i-phone look-a-likes and the higher quality smartphones with i-phone interfaces.

There are probably hundreds of variations of i-phone clone so I won't bother going into naming them all. The phone I purchased was the MiPhone M88++ (I think?? ). I originally purchased the M89+ for its enhanced processing power but the seller informed my that it would not work on Irish GSM networks and offered the M88++ with the same features at approximately the same price. It was around €140 unlocked with an 8GB MicroSD card (Courier shipping from HK incl.).

I know there are probably a lot of bad reviews of these phones due to peoples bad experiences with some of the low-end knock-offs which seem to be no more than a dodgy OS in a cheap i-phone shell. However, I have had a great experience with the M88++ which runs the Windows Mobile 6.1 O.S. which I feel is superior in some ways to the iPhone OS. There are millions of apps available freely on the net which is a huge plus. The phone I bought came with a pretty tacky iPhone interface clone which I quickly replaced with an SPB shell which is far more intuitive. The original interface was just made to look like the iPhone OS but many of the icons were not linked correctly or did not work. With a bit of tweaking, this is quite a powerful mobile device. Just to list a few of the main features;

• Built-in Wi-fi
• GPS
• 524MHz processor
• 512MB FLASH+ 256mb sdram
• Windows Mobile 6.1 Operating system
• MicroSD support (up to 16gb)

In case ye are wondering, I am not selling these devices , just wanted to share my experience with what I feel is a quality iPhone clone. On the downside, this phone does not have 3G and the camera is pretty poor (I think it's just a basic VGA camera, although it says it's 2MP. Other than that, you can't beat it for value for money (€140 unlocked vs €550 approx. for an unlocked iPhone).

One word of warning is to be fully sure what phone you are getting as there are so many variations out there and quality can differ significantly. Also, check the MicroSD cards that come with the phone as these are often given false capacity readings (as happened in my case but the seller actually refunded me $15 and I was able to purchase a genuine Sandisk card from dealextreme for a similar price).

Also, the native interface on the device can be pretty awkward (and the user manuals are translated poorly from Chinese to English) so it's worth tweaking the devices with custom interfaces and apps to get it working well.

The Windows Mobile OS is great as it synchronises readily with my laptop whenever the USB is connected (ActiveSync) including sychronising e-mails and contacts from Outlook as well as any scheduled meetings and appointments. The phone also comes with an Office Mobile suite which is particularly handy.

Here is a link to the phone I purchased. I think it's the same model but this is not the same seller. It's the one with Wifi, GPS and 524MHz processor. Some of the older models have a slower CPU.