iPhone clones made from cheap components and a skinned-up version of Android made to look like iOS are nothing new, but one of the latest iPhone 6 knock-offs out of China could be one of the first that’s actually a better phone than the one it imitates — at least where some key specs are concerned.
The Dakele 3, also known as “Big Cola 3,” claims to have the sapphire screen that the iPhone 6 was rumored to get early on; an eight-core, 1.7GHz MediaTek processor; and a whopping 3GB of RAM. That’s compared with a dual-core 1.4GHz A8 processor with 1GB of RAM in the iPhone 6. (About the name: the phrase “ke le” is part of the trademark Coca-Cola uses in China, but can also be translated as “be happy,” which might be more what the company is going for.)
To be fair, other flagship phones have had better specs on paper than the iPhone for years now, but Apple has always done a notable job designing iOS to squeeze tons of performance out of its hardware.
According to the Dakele website (after being run through Google Translate), Big Cola 3 also boasts a 5-inch screen with a resolution of 1,920×1,080 (that’s a pixel density of 441 pixels per inch, compared with the iPhone 6’s pixel density of 326ppi); a fast-charging 2,500mAh battery; a 13-megapixel main camera; and an 8-megapixel selfie cam. Oh, and it’s also worth mentioning that the rear camera lens doesn’t protrude from the back as much as the shooter on the iPhone 6 does.
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Of course, a knock-off is still a knock-off, and specs on paper don’t tell us much about how this phone will perform. Not to mention that it’s still an Android phone that’s going to have a hard time accessing your Apple account, so this is all just an elaborate game of make-believe or projecting a certain consumer image.
While the look of both the phone hardware and the Android KitKat skin jobs are clearly meant to be iPhone rip-offs, the price certainly isn’t. GizmoChina reports the Big Cola 3 will cost about $240 (about £158, $AU309).
Get a taste of the Big Cola in the promotional video below.