14 DAY TRIAL // A while ago, I promised myself I won't write again an article about cellphone clones or any other carbon-copied devices I might encounter during my daily browsing sessions. But, despite my promise, I can't help myself doing this because as it seems, the ones that fill out their time trying to do their best copying the work and the products, released by mobile phone companies that have already made a name for themselves on the mobile market, are getting better each day.
Today I got lucky and discovered the device pictured in the attached photo, a cellphone being sold at an eBay auction. The name is LangXin M902, it is being manufactured by a Chinese company (what a huge surprise isn't it?) and if you don't manage to point out the phone it copies, I'll help you by blowing up the mystery into little pieces.
The M902 is a very good clone of the Sony Ericsson W950i, probably the best handset in the SE Walkman series. At the beginning of this article, I had my mind set on totally destroying the LangXin clone but on a more serious inspection of its specs sheet, it really proves almost worthy of the money the eBay auctioneer wants (if you are ready to make some moral concessions and don't think about it as not being a cloned cellphone).
The device is 12.6 mm thick, features a built-in 512 MB memory card, a 2.4 inch TFT touchscreen display with a 176 x 220 pixels resolution (a 260k color as the seller claims it to have), a multimedia player with support for audio (MP3, midi, WAV, AMR, AAC) and video (MP4, 3GP) files, USB and Bluetooth connectivity, 100 to 200 hours of standby time (a clone specific standby :D if you ask me), only a GSM phone radio so the US people are totally left out from the fun and, hang on to your pants, a 1.3 megapixel camera every single W950i user that ever bought the Sony Ericsson cellphone has been asking for such a long time.
I have to hand it to the Chinese "cloners" that built this device from ground up (more specifically from W950i up :) ): they did a good job on it, with the touchscreen and that 1.3 megapixel camera but, in the end, their product shows the indispensable flaws every clone is doomed to have: an unreliable software platform and a feeling of owning a reaally cheap piece of hardware.
To be a little more on the truth side, the M902 can't be called an actual piece of hardware because the plasticware tag suits it a lot better :).
Conclusion? You can get along very well with the "Made in China" LangXin M902 PDA mobile phone but I advise you not to go head first and buy it because a Sony Ericsson W950i would do a better job even if it doesn't have a built-in digital camera.
Why? First of all, the W950i has a software platform which doesn't let you down when you most need the phone, it has a (MUCH) longer battery life and you won't feel like a supporter of the Chinese underground cellphone cloning movement.