Knockoff iPhone 5 Surfaces Before Official iPhone 5 Release, Wait What?

So while Chinese iPhone knockoffs usually surface after the release of the new iteration of the iPhone, it looks as if that just changed. A French Apple site by the name NowhereElse.fr has recently posted pictures of the Goophone i5, the iPhone knockoff, on their site.

The iPhone “5” knockoff features a familiar design as it’s pretty much the same as all of the leaks we’ve seen in the recent past. For instance, the backplate is metal with two small strips of glass (or plastic, in this case) on the top and bottom of the plate. The front of the device looks very similar to the current iPhone 4S design, while the buttons look slightly changed to look more like the supposed iPhone 5. The device does not, however, feature a 4-inch screen as it still sports a 3.5″-inch screen.

The internals of the device are pretty disappointing. The phone runs on 512MB of RAM and a 1GHz MT6575 ARM Cortex 1GHz processor and sports two cameras: a 5-megapixel rear shooter and a 1.3-megapixel forward facing camera. These specs are a lot lower in speed than the projected specs of the iPhone 5.

We’re not totally sure if the device is functional because there are no pictures of the device actually turned on. Doesn’t really matter though — I’d buy at least twelve for coasters in my living room.

Source: NowhereElse via Electronista

Andrew is a geek, Apple enthusiast, blogger and coffee lover from Chicago.