Review: A Counterfeit, $100 iPhone X
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Hey, nice right to repair nod, but that phone doesn't contain any Apple parts, so it's definitely not an iPhone X.
How about this guy, who "built a like-new (but really refurbished) iPhone 6S 16GB entirely from parts purchased from the public cell phone parts markets in Huaqiangbei."? :D
https://strangeparts.com/how-i-made-my-own-iphone-in-china/
Making-of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leFuF-zoVzA
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=3dbenchy&iar=images&iax=images&ia=...
Anecdata: I was offered one of these liePhones at a Chinese airport, before going through the controls. They are very convincing at a glance, and the dudes offering them wear business suits, making it seem like it's an emergency sale. Airport police lets them be as long as they don't bother people too much.
This is going to sound weird but I've never found any relevance for symbols, nor any understanding of things like 'status'. What you say is like words from another language, or even concepts I don't have. So permit me: what does having status mean in practical terms, if any? Does the judgement of others matter if it's based on, to be blunt, ownership of trinkets?
Not trolling, genuine question.
But in these cultures it's also incredibly important to be seen as "doing well for yourself". You will see people from these cultures will frequently(for instance) drive a Mercedes, just because that means you've achieved something in life. Doesn't matter the Mercedes in question is 20 years old and on bald tires, it's a Mercedes, parents and grandparents can now say they are proud of you. It increases your social standing. Likewise, if you manage to buy an iPhone, that can be seen a an achievement(even if the iPhone is fake, what matters is people think you can afford an iPhone). Then in turn, if you are seen as successful(by the virtue of having those expensive things) you get better social opportunities, for employment, education, housing....it's almost cliche, but in some places having an iPhone, a good car and a gold chain(all fake of course) can really and measurably improve your standard of life.
Like, have you never seen a movie where a person emigrates to a wealthy country, and writes/calls the family back home saying "oh yeah I have my own bed, a car, a TV and a mobile phone! We eat meat every night" and like at home , that's incredibly impressive, even though to me or you that's just normal stuff.
The issue of using fake merch to show-off your status is that others will eventually catch up. Once every second person will have a fake expensive-looking phone, for example, it will lose its meaning. The rich and successful will find other ways to differentiate themselves. And I don't believe that owning a fake phone is going to make you successful. Being successful is a mindset.
I agree with your comment, and I believe that these status symbols —fake or not— make people unhappy.
However, I’ll like to point out a few things.
When you say “western cultures”, you mean the US and Europe; Latin America is also part of the western culture but the situation is different. In the US the iPhone is not a status symbol, because even with a low wage you’ll be able to easily get one with a cellphone contract.
But, I don’t think that first world people is “moving past” status symbols, they have others: Food, what you eat tells a lot about your status — you can see that all the time in the Bay Area. College, where you got your degree is another symbol of status. Hobbies, the more expensive —or extravagant— the better.
A beautifully naive and disconnected perspective. Why do you think Instagram or Snapchat or even Facebook are so popular? A good part of it is to show off conspicuous consumption.
If anything, now that they can afford it a bit more, people are even more vain.
Citation needed. So far from my point of observation the desire to obtain prestige items, get prestige credentials and live in prestige places has not subsided substantially.
I knew a girl, who had a minimum wage job, but bought her boyfriend a $300 sweater simply to show his parents she had money.. I asked about it, and she pretty much told me it came down to "give face".
i think it is this: "面子" and as others have written, one of the more difficult concepts for western culture to fully understand.
I think giving a gift to prove to someone that your rich is not giving face (that would be if the gift is freely given without the intent of proving your wealth), but rather taking face or in western terms, showing disrespect.
Seems like a bad thing either way, but for various reasons and (potentially) involved parties.
The people spend enough time around you to know that your phone, while looking a little beaten, is actually very reliable -- they don't care what kind of phone you have.
I think the film Parasite portrays the nuances of this kind of status quite well. (Even though the film is slightly comedic, I don't think the portrayal of status is exaggerated in the film.)
In the west I don't see nearly as much (well, I'm in the UK to be precise) and don't actually see it so much in others. But what I do see puzzles me.
But thanks for a solid perspective.
As to why some people who clearly cannot afford these would buy counterfeit goods or (more frequently in the West, accumulate excessive debts to pay them), I assume there is the desire to belong (or appear to belong) to said social class, coupled with the fact that appearance very much matters in our society and people are judged every day based on their appearance rather than their skills or their characters. That judgment can result in better job, promotions, better sexual partner, better social accceptance.
Now, multiply that tenfold for poorer countries.
I have a 15 year old car. It runs great. I don't care that paint is peeling or the windshield is cracked.
Personally, I've been taught from a young age to value personal/emotional/spiritual growth over the accumulation of material goods, so I'm certain that upbringing has affected my outlook on this topic.
If I’m hiring from a pile of 1,000 resumes, and I don’t have time to review each one and speak to everyone, I’ll use the applicant’s school selectivity as a proxy for the probability of that candidate being a good fit.
Everyone does it, to evaluate how threatening someone looks or how attracted they might be to you, or how much economic value they might present to you, etc.
How accurate the information you’re using to base the assumptions is, of course, subject to change and can be wrong many times. But owning expensive things is considered a clue that the owner has the ability to procure many other resources, which might be relevant for a woman looking for economic security.
If you’re in the US, you can also look up someone’s job title/employer/their house address and get an idea of their income/wealth more accurately than the phone they use, so it might seem nonsensical in the US.
From another direction, how would an average citizen C of your country size up another person D who's bought BMW? Would C actually think significantly better of D?
I went to a school where there was a large mix of wealth, some kids were extremely well off, multi-millionaire parents, and bought new (expensive and high quality) clothes. Quite a few others bought from charity shops (often of necessity like me). Not once in the years I was there did I ever hear any reference to clothes, or any measure of a person related to their clothing. It was all down to the person you were and I don't imagine our school was any special in that.
Is status in the eyes of self, or others?
And no, I'm not being sarcastic, this is literally how people think.
And also, I think a form of this also exists in the West - I've heard many times that if you drive say, a Ferrari, people will approach you and literally ask "hey, you're successful - how can I get to where you are?". Sure some will be hateful, but some will be genuinely intrigued how you came into possession of this wealth and how can they replicate it.for themselves - they respect you despite knowing absolutely nothing about you, purely because you drive a fancy car. Again, not universal, but I know it happens. Same principle applies to that fake iPhone.
It's not a vestigial impulse, it is perfectly rational.
TL;DR, it matters to some people. Those people are not you or me. I don't get it, but I do.
There are way too many counter-examples to just declare this false.
> Employment at a FAANG company.
I want to get paid more, and work on hard/interesting problems.
> Name on a research paper
I want credit for my work of course (why would you go out of your way to not have your name on a paper you contributed to), but impressing others is not the reason I would be in research (again - solving interesting/hard problems and hopefully making the world a little bit better would probably be the motivation if that was my career)
> False degree
I wouldn't want this.
> Membership at an exclusive club
Presumably this exclusive club does something together that I'm interested in, or at least has members that I want to talk to about something I'm interested in. (Or maybe we just go out to eat socially, that sounds fun).
Of course signalling status is useful as a means to an end. (E.g. I would want to appear as a competent/successful developer while applying for said FAANG job, or as a wealthy person while applying for a business loan). But I gain little joy from status in and of itself.
> is about status we want for ourselves or show to others...why we need them is because...signify strength which we feel we need
There is a symmetry here that may be escaping you, that I am not you and don't share these feelings. And I've found that many people not only don't understand that, they actually can't. Like I said, it's almost as if I'm missing concepts others have.
The problem is not that he's projected values onto you, but rather that you're failing to empathize with others (because your original question was essentially "why do people care about it?"; not "why should I care about it).
And if you assume that some or even many people do care about status symbols, and we have evidence of it in that these status markets do exist, then it becomes trivial to see where the value lies.
If you want to get into why do people place values on status symbols, the simple answer is that as a society we primarily communicate by such means; we build internal representations and assumptions and initially learn the value systems of other people based on the initial perception -- this may prove wrong, and may be corrected in longer conversation, but the vast majority of people we see we will never engage with thoroughly enough to use language as the primary basis of communication.
We need something quicker, and often we need a good filter, because we simply do not have the time, energy or interest to engage with every individual properly. It is extremely useful to be able to identify someone interesting in a crowd/party, and it is optimal to spend the majority of your time with people who interest you.
And of course there are many symbols and flags one might be interested in -- gold watches and iphones to signify wealth and prestige; reputation and parties to signify social connections; references to TV, movies, artists etc to signify cultural background and interests; clothing to signify class
Spot on, I don't get it.
> It is extremely useful to be able to identify someone interesting in a crowd/party, and it is optimal to spend the majority of your time with people who interest you.
The latter part of the sentence, sure, the former part, no. Having a fancy phone/expensive says precisely zero to me about someone's capacity to be interesting.
> there are many symbols and flags one might be interested in...
And with all that, you've just embedded my sense of bafflement! I have little and the things I care about are ephemeral but not tangible. I guess I'll have to thank you for trying but must concede defeat.
Let's go with this:
I'm going to assume you agree that people, in general, assume certain things based on how other's look. We see dundee hat, and assume an australian. We see a star trek shirt, and assume they like star trek. Etc.
The singular direction of assumption I think, is obviously true.
But this mode of communication has two parties -- you, and the person/people looking at you.
Once we realize that other people are assuming things about us, based on what we have, wear and show, then the next step is to realize we can shape their assumptions, by doing two things:
1. Understand what things lead to what assumptions
2. Decide our target assumption, and change what we show to lead to those assumptions
So, like a bird with a mating call, we can signal to our peers what interests and goals we have, which they can choose to follow to reach us.
And like a bird with a mating call, which has certain qualities and factors governing fitness of the bird, we can be better or worse and producing stronger signals, and a poorly constructed signal can instead work against us -- If I want to be known as a nerd, I better not confuse star trek and star wars (even in honest forgetting) lest I expose a new signal, of a fake nerd.
And vice versa, we follow the mating calls to those that interest you. The iphone tells you nothing -- its not a signal you'll follow. For someone else, it might be a valuable signal. But for you, its not, and that's perfectly fine. You listen to other calls. Like perhaps, those that signal a preference towards "practical" thinking and needs.
I disagree. Fancy/expensive phone signals conformity. Shitty old non-smart phone? Now that might be someone interesting!
In the early part of this century, I used to travel in Asia quite a bit, and I started collecting knock-off Apple products as souvenirs. I had quite a collection of various look-alikes at one point. It was a cheap hobby because they were all very inexpensive, and if you were in the right country or situation, you could haggle the price down a little further.
They were all in the one box that got lost (stolen?) when I moved out of Seattle.
(Not Apple-related, but I still have a watch that plays videos [loaded with On Her Majesty's Secret Service and The Incredibles] that I picked up in Singapore for US$30 around 2005.)
I'd like to imagine the karma involved in the thief thinking they'd made it... only to discover what they'd nicked. My condolences for losing the physical objects, but I'm glad you have those memories. Thanks for sharing!
Yes, status (which is often a stand-in for class, if we’re honest) existed before the west, but the value (and by extension, class stand-in) to consumer brands is something the west has very successfully exported to the rest of the world. It’s why nearly every major brand with “status” is a western brand. This has changed in some sectors (automobiles, though real “status” is still largely given to German or Italian or high-end British variants — there is some status around Asian car brands, significantly less around almost all American brands — and in some areas of electronics, Japanese brands became the status symbols in the 1980s and beyond, Sony is a prime example here), but by and large, the brands that exhibit “status” in non-western countries (and I’ll expand this to parts of Europe that came of age in the post Soviet era), in my experience, it’s the western brands that gain the most attention.
Dubai, as an example, has a tremendous amount of wealth on display. It’s the height of nouveau riche, even though the money itself is very old, and as a westerner, I was floored by the near religious dedication to western culture and brands. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Cara de Lavigne or Kendall Jenner’s face on as many billboards in my life. Seeing a Red Lobster in Dubai with a line even longer than the one in Times Square, largely by non-tourists from what I could tell, in a place where many of the people there have far more money than the average Red Lobster patron in the US, was incredibly fascinating.
Because this clone doesn't: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63u6b-eHYzU
That said, as a nerd I am pretty dense when it comes to fashion and have never understood the "signalling" that goes on. Even when kids at school wore counterfeit iZod polo shirts to signal elite status? I could never figure that out. But I recognized that it was really important to some people that they be perceived as fashionable, and without the means to pay the prices resorted to fakes.
I disagree --- as anyone who does repair on other, more mechanical appliances and such can tell you, rivets can be easily drilled out and replaced. Not as convenient as screws, but in fact I'd much rather deal with rivets than glue.
Flag this. It is not an iPhone X by any measure. Title is misleading.
Much of the "insecurity" the author describes just makes it work like older Android versions which don,t "secure" the phone from its own user.
I,m still using Android 7 myself. My secondary device with 8 on it already has bullshit like screenshot blocking.
I feel like a lot of folks on HN don't buy used / second hand products - especially in non US / EU settings. If you did, you would IMMEDIATELY understand that if a cheapo battery can be dropped in that shows 100% battery life - IT WILL BE. And then your phone will die in a month or two.
This extends to everything. Conversely, some telecom services overseas are insanely cheap by western standards. Anyone know why / how this is?
For india it's $4-5/month for 3GB/day of data.
Where I get upset is when Apple purposefully makes these parts difficult or impossible to replace, or removes functionality when they are detected.
If delays between warnings are long, the scammer will wait until one is shown and then sell the fake, and the buyer will only be warned when it’s too late.
If it’s high, the difference with “forever” is small, and you’ll still be annoyed.
Having a separate screen that shows the warning on demand or showing the warning only after a new sim is inserted might be the best option, but I fear too few customers would know about it.
People learnt to check iCloud lock status before buying an used/stolen iPhone.
Grandma don't know how to access diagnostics? She can and should ask her techie grandson for help when buying an used phone.
There is absolutely no excuse for this purely anti-competitive behavior.
FWIW I'm not an Apple hater, I think their laptops and phones are the best out there.
But I have an android instead of an iPhone because I can't stand not being able to install what I want in iOS, that's a deal breaker for me.
And if they go the same route with MacOS I'll switch to Dell+Ubuntu.
Apple is trading on its reputation. "It's only OK to show non-genuine once". Scammers love this. They install the bogus battery, click through the warning, then when they show you you are screwed.
Why can't apple disable features, like battery life indication, for batteries they haven't profiled for the service? This is what makes users trust apple, if your phone says battery life is 80%, you can be pretty sure it is 80%.
Like I said above, once every boot is fine, this is what my Dell Laptop does when I plug a non standard charger for example.
> Why can't apple disable features, like battery life indication, for batteries they haven't profiled for the service? This is what makes users trust apple, if your phone says battery life is 80%, you can be pretty sure it is 80%.
No, this is not for "trust", this is only for greed since without competition Apple can ask basically any price for changing your smartphone battery.
Take an example of iPods, it was also an immensely popular Apple product and it didn't have anything like this and still was fine. I don't remember anyone saying that "buying an used iPod is untrustworthy".
Actually, the only issue Apple even had with batteries as far as I remember was caused by them, thanks to the feature that slowed iPhones when the battery was not running at sufficient capacity.
Swollen batteries, bad batteries that were third party batteries were a pretty major iphone repair issue. Trying to cut down this obvious type of brand damaging behaviour is obviously good business to preserve reputation. I've been in line listening to a store employee try to explain that this wasn't their battery (before the whole crackdown). People literally still think Apple should repair these swollen phones (I bought it from XXX who told me that battery was good - it showed 100%, now its swollen / broken - fix it!).
Apple doesn't know the battery life of a made in china battery. They charge an insane premium (including in used form) because of the flat out trust folks have in these devices. The tech inside does not generate this premium - their margins are mind blowing for what could be a commodity.
The slow down issue was because apple was trying to extend useful life of their devices, at least that is one, not unreasonable view. Note - they support their devices far far LONGER than their "open" competitors - which often ship with old software (adware laden) and then never update.
I keep my phone about 3 years and it's never been able to get latest iOS. My elderly parents kept their phones for 6 years and theirs was getting point releases still of an older iOS (not sure how that works but it did).
for my parents especially - the trust issue is absolutely huge. They just don't trust that HTC or whomever won't ship with impossible to uninstall crap on the phone. same with carriers - again, apple has locked down much harder and so carriers are not "free" to install their stuff - lots of complaints, but for many users (not all) this is a positive not a negative. They don't have time to research which carrier installed app is crap, they don't know how to uninstall them etc.
I'm going to let this one lie because any defense of Apple just get's voted into oblivion.
But your posts would go over a lot better without those first sentences evaluating the perceived shortcomings of the people you're conversing with.
Marginal cost for data transfer is pretty cheap (I remember seeing something like $.03 per GB).
Most of the cost of a telecom is in getting the rights required to set it up (fcc rights/land rights/ etc), and start-up labor (building poles/burying cable/building towers/etc). Running it is (by comparison) fairly cheap day to day.
Also, a reduction in start-up costs means more players can be in the game -> more competition -> lower prices.