VIDEO: World’s First iPhone clone to go Android reviewed

Phone clones are never going to be as good as the original… and after playing around with at least 15 or so in the past I can see why; clunky hardware.. crap GUI (despite the ripped off iPhone icon set) and even worse.. Windows Mobile at the core. That all changes with the Aphone A6, which by way of the Android OS drastically bridges the gap between the iPhone and its iFauxne cousins. Read on to see how good this phone really is and a video of us putting it through its paces.

To wet your appetite here are the Aphone A6 specs (according to the manufacturer):

Multi-touch Capacitance Panel
3.5inch TFT LCD Screen(260000 color)High Definition
GSM EDGE/WiFi Intelligent Cellphone
Google Android 1.5 OS
Dual-Core CPU(Fast at 300Mhz) by Infomax Technology Co
260MB FLASH、130MB RAM
Support(GMAP、Opera Mini、FTP、PC-class Web Browser)
Network Frame/Network Whiteboard/Weather
Support Net-communicate (Skype/QQ/MSN)
E-mail、Office
Internal More Than20 Games and may download freely
G-safe TM
2 Million-pixel Camera
Support Bluetooth2.0 ，Mini-USB
Support TF Slot(2G-16G)

According to our sources (and until we rip apart this phone ourselves) this is purportedly the duel-core ARM processor from InfoMax at the heart of the device. Its notable also as we’ve only seen shanzhai phones from Marvell and now Infomax running Android… no sign of the ever popular shanzhai platform from MediaTek.

Device Build quality
Size is slightly larger than iPhone 3G or 3Gs, some bluish and highly visible discoloration on the back panel near some interesting looking speaker holes. The speakers sound loud and tinny. Typical of other iFauxnes we’ve tried.

Volume rocker switch is in the same place as on the iPhone, works fine but there is no mute switch. Another rocker switch on the opposite side side guides you back and forth through applications on the device.

You will note the Blackberry Pearl-like trackball, it feels good, responds well, seems totally pointless due to the high responsiveness of the touch screen, but might comfort some trackball loving users for better one handed navigation through apps.

In a strange move along the bottom of the phone they’ve gone to a micro-USB headphone jack and USB connection to the PC. The micro-USB cover strip is a bit crap, I could see this falling off at some point. They also tried to copy the USB charging plug of the original iPhone but they’ve kind of cheaped out here and it actually doesn’t function out of the box for us. We had to buy a special universal charger and shove the batteries into that device to get any power for our Aphone A6.

Speaking of batteries, the device’s back plate removes comfortably and easily. The Aphone A6 comes with 2 batteries… removable… decent enough battery life to count this possibly as a hardware advantage over the original iPhone which is NOT known for its own great battery life. The phone sucked about 25% of the battery life idling on standby over 24 hours and while we didn’t measure the juice used in the real world (yet) it SEEMS to be about normal compared with the real iPhone usage when playing around with apps and receiving calls.

Under the batteries the SD Card and SIM card slots are easy enough to access but the little metal clips that help position them aren’t too stable. If you’re not changing these items often it shouldn’t be a big deal though.

Where they didn’t cheap out and is very much appreciated is the touch screen. Its incredibly good. Its also where 99% of iFauxne clones perform poorly. So it was a pleasure to be swiping and pushing icons ONCE instead of four times to open and close programs and to move between screens. Its not a perfectly clear screen and some discoloration in the bottom left corner was revealed when in camera mode but it isn’t noticeable at other times.

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