China firm knocks off iPhone 5; oh wait, there is no iPhone 5 yet
A Chinese company may already be knocking off the iPhone 5, even before Apple has officially announced the actual iPhone 5, according to a new report.
The report comes to us from the French website No Where Else (NWE). This week the site posted pictures and video of a smartphone called the “Goophone i5” that looks remarkably like leaked photos of the iPhone 5 that have been popping up on the Web all summer long.
One notable difference: the Goophone i5 has what appears to be a 3.5 inch screen, rather than the 4 inch screen most people are expecting from the new iPhone 5 model.
The company producing the Goophone has also replaced the Apple logo with a cute little bee.
“I do not endorse any manufacturing and marketing of counterfeit whatsoever but I am still admiring face to the reactivity of Chinese when it comes to anticipating the release of a new product,” writes Steve Hemmerstoffer, founder and editor in chief of No Where Else. (Translation provided by Google Translate).
Hemmerstoffer was not able to get specs on the phone, or how much it will cost.
Keep in mind that nothing about the iPhone 5 has been confirmed by Apple, so despite all the iPhone 5 rumors and leaked pictures flying around the Internet, we won’t really know the specifics of the iPhone 5 until Apple makes an official announcement, probably sometime in September.
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