As the world awaits the release of the iPhone 5 on Sept. 21, there is already a knock-off phone selling in China that looks just like the leaked design of the iPhone and that partially steals the name of another Internet giant: It’s called the Goophone I5.
The China version looks just like the iPhone 5—at least based on what it appears to look like from the leaked design—and it sounds like Google. It’s also running an unknown version of Android—instead of the Android 2.3 that previous knock-off Chinese phones tended to run.
One difference that’s been noted between the leaked iPhone 5 design and the Goophone is the size of the screen—the Goophone screen measures 3.5 inches, while the rumored iPhone 5 screen is supposed to be 4 inches.
The Goophone makers have already made knock-offs of Apple products: The Goophone Y5 4S looks just like the iPhone. And the Chinese versions tend to be a lot cheaper than the phones that come out of Apple. All of this is completely legal in China, whose intellectual property laws are much more lenient than they are in the U.S.