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From: Theo Markettos on 4 Apr 2010 11:54
A few months ago, in the 'dual SIM phones' thread, I was asking about such
phones from China.

I've been given another Chinese dual SIM phone. This one claims to be a
dual SIM 32GB iPhone A1241. Well, it's dual SIM but I'm doubtful it's 32GB
and it certainly isn't an iPhone. Dialling *#8375# says the software is
ONECOM V188, whatever that is.

Anyway, they've sadly been copying Apple in their hardware design. There's
a slot for a single SIM on the top, but you need something flat (like
another SIM card) to eject it. The second SIM card is inside, which
requires a tiny screwdriver and a lot of clips to access. Having done that,
the battery is easily replaceable.

Outwardly it looks the same... single menu button at the bottom of the
screen, power button on the top edge, mode button (silent etc) on the left
top and below that two scroll buttons. Touch-scroll is a bit flaky, so the
scroll buttons come in handy

So let's list the things it doesn't have:
3G
GPS
Wifi
Multitouch
Email (just SMS and MMS)

Anyway, the software is nothing like an iPhone. It doesn't say, but some of
the menus are similar to the Sigmatel FXD S9000, so I suspect the 'iPhone'
softward came from the same place.

It also seems to have only a basic WAP browser. I can't make internet
access work - that may be a problem with the non-UK network it's on (they
say internet access works on 3G devices but don't mention 2G), but also
there password entry fields only shows stars - which makes making sure
you've typed the right password impossible on the tiny keyboard. It comes
with some presets for Chinese mobile networks.

There's an onscreen keyboard, but in portrait mode my thumb covers 12 keys.
Each key is about 2.5mm square. I spend a lot of time deleting wrong
keypresses. I can't persuade it to rotate to portrait mode.

I think there is an accelerometer, but it's almost useless. For example,
viewing photos takes about 2-5 seconds to rotate a photo, so there's not
much point flipping the phone to view it.

The camera is fairly poor... and quarter VGA.

Bluetooth connectivity works, but at max 920kbps I'd hate to try to upload
32GB. I get about 400kbps.

I haven't put any music on it, but it has an 'iPod' app which looks like any
other music player (so nothing special). It also has an FM radio (that
needs an earpiece to function, I assume for the aerial). It doesn't seem to
like FAT long filenames. You can load extra ringtones.

With USB under Linux it comes up as a 2GB mass storage partition with:
0e8d:0002 MediaTek Inc.
That sounds more like the real capacity.

Battery life is about 2-3 days in standby, or 1 day if much touchscreen use.

Having said all that, the dual SIM functions seem to work OK and the
software is fairly solid if limited. So it's a reasonable phone if you want
to make phone calls. So buy it if you want an iPhone to pose with, but only
really make calls and texts, or if you want a dual SIM phone with a
reasonably functional touch UI. Don't buy it if you want internet access or
the ability to load apps. And I wouldn't pay more than about 50 quid.

Theo
From: R. Mark Clayton on 5 Apr 2010 16:38

"Theo Markettos" <theom+news(a)chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote in message
news:o+f*q2I7s(a)news.chiark.greenend.org.uk...
>A few months ago, in the 'dual SIM phones' thread, I was asking about such
> phones from China.
>
> I've been given another Chinese dual SIM phone. This one claims to be a
> dual SIM 32GB iPhone A1241. Well, it's dual SIM but I'm doubtful it's
> 32GB
> and it certainly isn't an iPhone. Dialling *#8375# says the software is
> ONECOM V188, whatever that is.
>
> Anyway, they've sadly been copying Apple in their hardware design.
> There's
> a slot for a single SIM on the top, but you need something flat (like
> another SIM card) to eject it. The second SIM card is inside, which
> requires a tiny screwdriver and a lot of clips to access. Having done
> that,
> the battery is easily replaceable.
>
> Outwardly it looks the same... single menu button at the bottom of the
> screen, power button on the top edge, mode button (silent etc) on the left
> top and below that two scroll buttons. Touch-scroll is a bit flaky, so
> the
> scroll buttons come in handy
>
> So let's list the things it doesn't have:
> 3G
> GPS
> Wifi
> Multitouch
> Email (just SMS and MMS)

Er did you check out the original iPhone spec'?

No 3G or Wifi, and I don't think it had GPS either...


From: Theo Markettos on 9 Apr 2010 17:11
R. Mark Clayton <nospamclayton(a)btinternet.com> wrote:
>
> Er did you check out the original iPhone spec'?
>
> No 3G or Wifi, and I don't think it had GPS either...

Right, but the real iPhone A1241 is the 3G version.

Anyway, this is so far from an iPhone that it wouldn't know what to do with
those features... I can't even make the web browser do anything, for
example.

Theo
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