No, the title is not a typo or something like that. You just sit tight and let me explain what this is all about.
Remember the times when only a few companies were able to manufacture and distribute mobile phones? Remember when the only cellphones available were made by Motorola or Nokia? If you don't, I do and today, I've just come to the conclusion that the world is coming to an end.
Why is that? Mostly because of the Chinese people, they are the ones that gave me this feeling and now, I can't get read of it. The thing that made me think so seriously about this fact is the Suny Ericssom P999 handset just released on the market by a Chinese company that has decided (together with some other phone manufacturers from China) to clone every piece of phone launched by the mobile manufacturers.
Nonetheless, it seems they are capable of doing a good job when they have the end product in their hands because the cloned handsets that will emerge from their assembly lines usually have better spec sheets compared to the originals.
I don't know how they are capable of making a phone with better features and sell it for less money or why would they do that (the only thing that crossed my mind was the profit cuts and the cheap work force) but as long as they do it, the Chinese probably have a good reason to pay a visit to the local retail store and buy themselves an enhanced version of any cellphone they might want.
The Suny Ericssom I'm writing about here is a dual-band GSM device that offers a 3.1 inch 256k colors TFT touchscreen display with handwriting recognition, microSD memory expansion card slot, a 2 megapixel digital camera capable of recording video with sound and making pictures at a 1280x960 pixels resolution, 4 speakers and a body made out of the same material as the Motorola A1200 (quite a funny thing to mention the body material of another cellphone in the spec sheet :) ).
The handset can be ordered online for 196.46 $ plus the shipping costs from China (I will let you find the store and believe me it will be pretty easy) and, if you will take a trip through the other cellphones available, you will understand very well what I mean by mass cloning. There is not a single original handset for sale on their online store and every cellphone they sell has a built-in touchscreen display.
Probably the Chinese must have some kind of tree that has touchscreen fruits if they are so eager to implement this solution in everything they make.