In part one of Shanzhai—beyond chips and PC hardware, I collected a smattering of non-IT shanzhai products, amused to see the creativity and intelligence of shanzhains. It was a bit of a tongue in cheek article but there are matters worth analyzing seriously. What drives shanzhai business?
Steven Levy in the June print edition of Wired has written a short piece entitled “Getting There” on the iPad phenomena and a few things that need to happen to tablets for them to truly succeed. He hits the nail on the head as far as I’m concerned but I think he’s coming at it from the wrong angle
If you’re bored of reading about the same technical specs in MIDs then Syncme has something new for you. The Syncme MID618 is a regular looking 4.8” MID running Windows Mobile 6.1 and boasting a 667MHz Samsung 6410 processor, 256MB RAM, and 2GB ROM. However, there is a little twist, this MID allows you to make and receive calls like a typical mobile phone
Do you remember the iPod touch rip-off from Newsmy, which supported almost all popular audio and video formats, and was extremely affordable at under USD 50? Newsmy has launched its successor, not an iPod clone this time, but a complete portable media player called the A39HD. The 3.6” media player has a widescreen display with an uncommon aspect ratio of 16:9 and support for high-definition 768p videos.
If you were ever a fan of the Japanese anime Eden of the East , you would have probably noticed a bizarre looking phone used by the main character, Selecao. Some of you may also have wanted to live out that fantasy and own a replica of Selecao’s phone. Here’s the thing: Japanese manufacturer NEC was supposed to craft a clone of Selecao’s phone for bike riders but miserably, it never made it past the drawing board.
The coolest thing about Apple’s Macbook Air is how thin it is, a lovely feature that can also be found in some of the well designed shanzhai versions. An example of such shanzhai excogitation is this upcoming Macbook-like 10-inch notebook. The notebook has a winning slick design and weighs only 1.07kg! The notebook is powered with an Intel Atom N270 CPU clocked at 1.6GHz in conjunction with Intel’s 945GSE chipset and GMA 950 graphics. 80GB of storage space is pretty cool
This is Wirelession’s 7” W1090 Android tablet. They’re claiming a whopping iPad-like 10 hours of battery life and they’ve got a nice little video demo of their device for you to see it in action as well.
In the US market the carriers tend to make or break a phone’s success. Get your phone distributed by a major carrier like AT&T or Verizon or Sprint and your going to get quite a bit of sales.
You may have admired some Nokia N900 clones in the past but but there are less chances of you falling in love with this one. The most disappointing thing is its bulkiness. It’s 21mm thick, 3mm more than the original Nokia N900! This replica features a two-way sliding system for the keyboard and dialer as well, which is a love it or leave it kind of a deal
