While most Chinese knock-offs of smartphones started out as poor imitations of their legit counterparts, they got better progressively to a point where you wouldn’t be able to easily tell them apart without close inspection. The GooPhone S5 is such an example, with a recent video showing just how intricate and advanced this company’s cloning of the S5 is.
Andi Sykes from GizChina got a GooPhone S5 review unit and posted his hands-on opinions. As expected, the finish on the device is cheap, every component in Samsung’s flagship is replaced by a cheaper counterpart, including a Mediatek processor, an 8MP camera, a 720p display, and 1GB of RAM. Obviously, water-resistance, the heart rate sensor, and the fingerprint scanner are nowhere to be found. However, tipping the scale positively is GooPhone’s not-so-subtle imitation of Samsung’s UI. At first glance, everything looks eerily identical, including the wallpaper, icons, app drawer, settings menu, and lockscreen. The kicker is with GooPhone actually going to the lengths of integrating some of Samsung’s own functionalities and not just designs in this knock-off. When Andi opens the video player, he takes the time to show us “Smart Pause” (or GooPhone’s equivalent) actually working properly twice, pausing the video while he looks aways and resuming when he looks back, along with the option to switch to a floating mini player. There’s even Smart Scroll in the Settings, which would allow scrolling with the eyes, and an S Note app that looks and works like Samsung’s.
It will only be available in China and in black markets in some countries, it won’t be the best-selling smartphone anywhere, but this GooPhone S5 is slightly impressive for the price. At $150, many users will just pretend they have a Galaxy S5 — or be fooled to think they do! — and enjoy some of Samsung’s gimmicky features that are apparently quite popular in Asia.
