Lost at cards manufacturer floods the market with ultra-cheap iPhone clones

Gionee has released a smartphone 13 Pro with the design of the iPhone 13. You can distinguish mobile phones primarily by the size of the cutout in the screen - the Chinese clone has a much smaller one. The device does not work on Android, but on Harmony OS. This is Huawei's mobile platform, positioned as a complete replacement for Android.

Chinese iPhone without Android Gionee has started selling the 13 Pro smartphone, which looks and is even called exactly like one of Apple's new mobile phones. The gadget got its name from the older model, and the design from the younger one. Gionee itself is known for its inexpensive smartphones, which peaked in popularity in the middle of the previous decade. Later, her founder lost her at cards, spending all the money from her accounts on gambling.

In Chinese retail, the new Gionee 13 Pro costs 529 yuan (6470 rubles, $83.1 at the exchange rate of the Central Bank on January 31, 2022). This is one of the cheapest modern iPhone clones, but unlike 99.9% of other smartphones that try to copy the look of Apple smartphones, it does not come with Android OS. Instead, the smartphone received firmware Harmony OS 2.0 by Huawei. It was created exactly as a complete replacement for Android.

Also, despite the extremely low price by the standards of 2022, the new Gionee 13 Pro is still better than the original iPhone 13 Pro in at least one parameter, which in Russia costs at least 100 thousand rubles. The advantage lies in the notch in the screen, which is much more compact in the Chinese smartphone.

Gionee copied only the appearance of the new Apple smartphones, but decided not to choose one of the three diagonals available in the iPhone 13 line. Instead of the already familiar 5.4, 6.1 and 6.7 inches, the company settled on a 6.26-inch IPS matrix Judging by the renders provided, the Gionee 13 Pro screen has very thin bezels, except for the bottom. In fact, this may not be entirely true due to the fact that the display occupies only 90.3% of the front panel, which is far from a record figure.

The screen supports HD+ resolution and has a 19:9 aspect ratio. The notch houses a 5MP stone for selfies and video calls. The manufacturer has provided a face recognition function, since this is the only way to unlock by biometrics - for maximum resemblance to the iPhone, the mobile phone does not have a fingerprint scanner.

The main camera block of Gionee 13 Pro has two holes for camera lenses. They are located strictly diagonally, like the base iPhone 13. This is the only feature that externally distinguishes it from the iPhone 12, whose sensors are located vertically. The primary sensor on the 13 Pro's camera is 13MP versus the 12MP on the iPhone 13. Other sensor parameters are unknown, as are all the details about the second sensor. It is possible that a snag was installed instead.

There is also a regular LED flash in the camera unit. The extra hole next to the potential second module is the microphone.

Свое новое творение Gionee собрала на процессоре Unisoc T310, от же Tiger 310, выпущенном в 2019 г. Он производится по 12-нанометровым нормам и сочетает в себе одно производительное ядро Cortex A75 на частоте до 2 ГГц и еще три энергоэффективных ядра Cortex A53. Их частота не превышает 1,8 ГГц. Точно такой же CPU установлен в новом смартфоне компании Meizu под названием mBlu10, анонсированном в середине января 2022 г. К слову, именно под маркой Meizu свет увидел самый первый клон iPhone в истории.

In the basic configuration, priced at almost 6500 rubles, the new Gionee 13 Pro comes with 4 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage. There is also a 128 GB version, but its price is unknown. The power system includes a 3500 mAh battery and a USB-C interface, which potentially means the presence of accelerated charging. In Chinese retail, the Gionee 13 Pro is available in black, purple, gold, and navy blue. Many of them, especially dark blue and purple, are also copied from the Apple iPhone.

Gionee was founded in 2002, 20 years ago. During the first 14 years of its existence, it showed very dynamic growth rates. In 2012, its share of the Chinese smartphone market rose to 4.7%, and a year later the company began its global expansion. In Russia, the company's devices were officially sold under other brands. For example, Prestigio purchased its products from Gionee and sold them under its own brand.

By 2016, the company's share in the Chinese market grew by 6%, and the total sales volume exceeded 40 million smartphones. This was the peak of their popularity. In 2017, the total debt of Gionee to creditors, of which there were 650, exceeded $ 3 billion. The company also owed to suppliers of components for its smartphones. Part of the blame for this lies with its founder, Liu Lorang, who had unlimited access to his company's money from the start.

CNews wrote that Liu Lorang lost more than $144 million in the casino, which he took from Gionee's account. According to other sources, he left many times more money in the casino - $ 1.4 billion. The consequence of this was a sharp 50 percent reduction in staff - someone was fired, someone left himself, without waiting for the collapse of the company. At the same time, Liu Lorang filed for Gionee's bankruptcy, which was granted on December 20, 2018 by the Shenzhen People's Court.

However, Liu Lorang did not plan to leave the smartphone market for a long time and regularly announced the imminent return of Gionee. He kept his promise in October 2019, when two new low-cost mobile phones saw the light under this brand. A month later, the duo grew into a trio when Gionee showed off the classic A326 clamshell.

In the summer of 2020, Gionee has prepared a smartphone with a huge 10000 mAh battery. But the triumphant return of Gionee still failed. In December 2020, it turned out that the company deliberately and, moreover, secretly from users, infected more than 20 million devices of its own production with a Trojan program embedded in standard software. The company profited from unwanted ads served by malware.