14 DAY TRIAL // Without a doubt, the iPad has served as a design model for countless Chinese knock-off tablets, and it now seems that its successor will suffer exactly the same fate, with photos of a first iPad 2 clone already hitting the web.
So, as the guys over at Shanzai report, it seems that a Chinese manufacturer who apparently had direct access to the original iPad 2 (or at least some informative materials depicting its external design) has already come up with an very accurate clone, just hours after the official launch event.
Unfortunately, for the time being, there's absolutely no technical info available regarding the respective clone, apart from a couple of photos, some of which we've also picked up, as you can easily see for yourselves.
So, as far as we're concerned, this might be a very elaborate mock-up or, who knows, maybe the work of a company who's only involved in the manufacturer of tablet cases, and who's now advertising its latest products.
On the other hand, it could very well be a fully functional device, but we'll probably have to wait a bit longer in order to find out what's what.
If you've followed our news section, you might have noticed that, from time to time, we've come reported on some fairly accurate iPad clones that made their way onto the Chinese market, most of which offered a very good level of similarity as far as the external design was concerned, but running instead either the Android OS or Windows 7.
And since the first iPad 2 clone has already appeared, we're pretty sure that the trend will continue over the next couple of months, the only difference being, hopefully, the move to a superior operating system for the knock-offs (Android 3.0 – Honeycomb running on a device that's visually identical to the iPad 2 would really be something interesting).
