GSi-R’s blog

V888 - Cloned N95-2

Following recently being contacted by a BBC spokesperson, asking me the very same question, I thought I would post up publicly, why I am so interested in Nokia N95 clones specifically.

Being a forum member of www.N95Users.com for such a little time, and gaining a great deal of information on the N95 from the N95 team, and many of the very friendly members there, a Nokia handset, which is much more than just a mobile phone.  Being an award winning, Multimedia handheld computer, is one of the reasons I purchased my first N95-1, then went on and also invested in the N95-2 also, and still own both today.

During my time being active on the N95users forums, almost every other day, we would have new members registering, and  posting about their recent purchase, following some things not quite right with their newly prized possession.  Following the exchange of several questions, and photos, we find out that these newly joined members have indeed been sold a Cloned N95 as a Genuine.  I have now joined the Moderating team of N95Users, which is an honour.

This leads me to answer the title of this post Question. "Why I have an Interest in them?"

I want to help other people from falling into the trap of purchasing a clone, thinking they are buying a genuine Nokia handset.  After all, these handsets are not cheap.!  Some members who joined our N95users community had saved up their hard earned to purchase their N95, and when it turns out to be a clone, you can only imagine how they feel.

Being scammed myself many moons ago by an eBay seller, although in my instance, not related to buying a cloned handset, it was related to a mobile phone, where I, at the time, not knowing what I know now I may add, got stung by a seller using an hacked eBay account.  Anyway, learning from this, from what I had to do to make a claim to get my money back, through eBay's poor, and not very user friendly claim procedure, and Paypal's Safety Trust scheme, I now wish to help others should they also get stung.  In almost all cases, you will not get all your money back, but you will receive a percentage of it, based on initial outlay, and type of purchase.  Again, very poor setup from eBay.

Back to the N95 Clones.

My VOX Blog

http://gsi-r.vox.com/library/post/n95-clones-a-global-problem-i-think-so.html

Asking the question, Are these Cloned devices a Global problem.?  I think so.

There are now eight different N95 clones to date, all varying in difference levels of quality, from the poor end of the scale being the NOKLA N95, to the almost identical N95-2 clone, made in Korea, with WIFI, and GPS.  This latter clone, fools many as their is an N95-4, which is genuinely made in Korea.

Most of the latter clones now also show a result, when you key in *#0000#, which with the genuine Nokia device will show you the handsets current firmware version.  With the latter clones, this will also show you the clones firmware version, which at the moment, is quite easy to tell apart from the genuine firmware versions, however, some clones, now even show up a genuine Nokia firmware result from entering *#0000#.  See my VOX blog for details, and a photo of an N95-2, showing an old N95-1 firmware version.  Quite shocking.  These obviously are to fool the buyer, AND seller to believe they have a genuine handset.

Talking of sellers of these clones, as mentioned in my VOX blog, many Do know what they are selling, but many DO NOT, and this is because, clones are getting mixed in with genuine handsets, how?  Well, there could be a can of worms to be opened, who knows.! 

With many sellers, not being able to tell the difference from just looking at the sealed packaging of these clones, which again, are almost identical to the genuine boxes, and packaging, its easy to see why some sellers also fall prey to the counterfeiters.  The only sure way for them to find out what they actually have is to open up the sealed box, and do some simple checks, including putting the battery in the handset, and keying *#0000# to check its firmware, and cross referencing it to a genuine devices firmware, but as mentioned above, even this can fool the not so experienced eye, not to mention, many sellers either dont have the time to do this, or do not wish to open a brand new sealed box, as they then cannot advertise the handsets as "New, Sealed in the box".

You can start to see now how this is fast becoming a global problem, as in this case, we are only talking about the N95 clones, there are clones, of almost every other Nokia handset too, all varying from level of detail.  I have contacted Nokia several times regarding these clones, and to date, have showed little interest.  I, personally would like to assist Nokia, and any investigation they may already have into tracking down the sources of these clones, which again, could open a can of worms.  With rumours online about stolen Nokia parts being used in Fakes, and cloned Nokia's, the plot thickens, and i really want to get my teeth into a piece of the action, and take down these counterfeiters.  I know that just one man against such a global problem could never work, which is why im posting this post here.  How can Nokia not do anything?

Whats your thoughts on these Nokia clones?

Have you purchased a Cloned Nokia, under the impression you were buying a genuine Nokia?

Which model did you fall prey to?

Where did you buy your clone?

Im aware of several outlets other than eBay, all of which are either in China, or Asia.  I have been researching these for quite sometime now, and will be working together with the BBC, and Nokia, should they contact me regarding this issue.

Thanks for reading my post here, I have also posted this up on my Wordpress blog in the hope to get more global coverage.

Look forward to any comments.

Micky

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Here are my views on the Nokia N810. Thanks to WOM WORLD for sending me this great device for trialing.

Advantages

Excellent Build Quality

Brilliant Screen

Long Battery Life

Disadvantages

Average Camera

No Screen Cover

Non QWERTY Keyboard on this particular N810

Sound Quality quiet.

IMG_1005.jpg

Build Quality, Design & Materials Used

Very heavy, and smooth device, which I was so worried about dropping.  Although it feels very well built, it is quite heavy, and with that, its also very smooth, and some what quite capable of slipping out your hand, and if this was to hit the floor, Im sure it would break into pieces,

IMG_1006.jpg

Screen

The screen is a great size, and being a touch screen, most navigation of the OS can be done using the pull out stylus; however, there are several hardware buttons that can also be used.  The screen, although big enough to see clearly, it does suffer I feel from angle blindness, which I think is to do with the anti reflection coating.  Watching a movie on this device would be comfortable, but you would have to wear earphones due to the low sound output from the built in speakers.

                                                            Keys

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Now this is where im a little confused, as I have seen other N810 devices with a full QWERTY keyboard, however, this particular one I received from WOM does not, and the letter Z is where you would normally find the Y key, and viscera with the Y where the Z would normally be on a QWERTY.  The keys however, are of a good size, and even with big fingers like myself, you can quite easily type documents without making too many mistakes.  The keys however do not have a click to them, they are quite soft to depress.

Messaging

Again, due to the Y & Z keys being in odd places on this particular model, messaging can be a little confusing at first, but you get used to it in time.

Battery Life

The battery life is superb, with an outstanding standby time.  Check out the specs at the bottom of this review.

IMG_1008.jpg

Memory and Performance

This is my first review of any device, so please excuse me for the lack of spec details from the top of my head.  This device is LINUX based, and it’s the first device I have used like this, with this platform, so its difficult for me at this time to compare it to anything else.  The running of the OS appeared smooth, and quite quick, and with the on screen status bars etc, its easy to know what the device is upto at all times, so no need to keep guessing if it has froze on you or not.

UI

LINUX based device, with WIFI, and Bluetooth connectivity.

IMG_1003.jpg

IMG_1000.jpg

WEB Camera

Location is on the left hand side, where I would of thought on the right of the screen would have been better.  I was unable to test out the quality of this however.

Music

Sound quality is very quiet with this device, and you would almost certainly have to wear earphones to listen to your music on this device.

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Connectivity

WIFI & Bluetooth.

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Conclusion

To put it blunt, I did not like this device at all, its too heavy, too smooth, and although I have not really had enough quality time with it as I would of liked, the time I have used this device, it just feels odd.  maybe its my lack of experience with Tablets, I don’t know.

Map_loader_21

Overview Using Nokia Map Loader can help you save on mobile data service costs and save time downloading map data over-the-air as you go. With maps for more than 150 countries worldwide, there’s a lot of data available! Download the places you need to Nokia Maps before you go and travel to your budget. Install Nokia Map Loader to your desktop, then download map data to your compatible PC and transfer it to Nokia Maps on your device.

Firefox 3 is on it's way.!

Whenever we’re asked “when is Firefox going to be released” we endeavor to answer to the best of our abilities, but the truth of the matter is that we’ll only ever ship “when it’s ready”. We have a lot of indicators that help us understand when the product is ready for release: feedback from our pre-release milestones, excitement in the community and the press, availability of compatible Add-Ons, and a large active beta community helping us ensure that the release is compatible with all the various sites on the Internet.

N95-1 connected

N95-2 Connected

- Separate Contacts and Messages applications are replaced with a single, easy-to-use solution: Nokia Communication Centre. It also allows you to create and manage MMS messages
- When the user selects a phone in the main window of Nokia PC Suite, this selection applies to all subsequently opened applications

- The phone calendar can be edited in the main window of PC Suite
- It is now possible to create new or forward text messages in PC Suite main window.
- PC Suite displays a notification of received text messages and incoming calls from the Windows notification area (Limited phone support)
- Status bars help keep track of the phone battery level and memory details (Limited phone support)
- PC Suite ensures that backed up contents will not be lost: if there is not enough room to restore a full backup file to a Nokia phone, the user can access the overspill content on the PC
- For phones with multiple drives, PC Suite creates separate backup files from the phone memory and from the mass memory
- Nokia Multimedia Player is no longer included in PC Suite
- Nokia Video Manager is now integrated into PC Suite
- Bookmarks can now be synchronized with Mozilla Firefox 3
- Nokia Application Installer now installs applications to external memory by default
- PC Suite is now available in Korean
- Windows 2000 is no longer supported

This version of PC Suite 7 Beta will be tested for 2 weeks, so if all goes well, should be available to the public soon after.  So far, this version is working fine with Vista Business Edition, including NSU.

PC Suite 7 Final

Cloned N95-2 without MicroSD slot

There is another clone out, this time, another 8GB cloned N95, made in Korea, and this time, is cosmetically identical to the untrained eye.  This one does not have the card slot like the poorer clone, which was a dead give away.

A few of the things to check without the device actually being turned on, but these differ across different clones of the same model, for example, in the photo below, you can see, the camera lens armature is very small, whereas the original lens of the N95 is 4 times as big, also, on some poorer clones, the LED next to the main camera is square, not round.

.

Clones Camera lens

To summarise

1. Screen protector is on upside down to how its fitted on the genuine N95.   On the clone, the tab is over the secondary camera, but on the very latest clone, this is fitted as the genuine one, see last image below of the latest clone.

2. Look at the main camera, (see photos (Right/clone-Lower Left/Genuine)), now take a closer look at the actual lens.  If its very small, this points to a lower spec camera.

3. Check the Mini USB port, on some clones, you cannot see the separate connecting pins, whereas you can on a genuine.  On the latest clones of the N95-2, they have made the usb port identical to the genuine one.

Genuine Camera Lens

This is becoming a Global problem now, and to which has encouraged myself to contact Nokia about them, thus still waiting a reply.

There are 8 N95 clones on the market place now, all ranging from different levels of detail, and the latest ones even show a result when *#0000# is entered, again to try and fool the unsuspecting buyer.

firmwareversionks6.jpg

The firmware you see (right) is what one of the latest Cloned N95-2 shows when *#0000# is entered into the keypad.  Obviously the cloned software has been hacked, or programmed to display this, to fool even more.

Keep an eye on my blog for updates.

Bookmark, or Subscribe tp RSS feed http://gsi-r.vox.com/

There are links in my blog to the articles I have put a lot of time, and money into researching these clones, and trying to educate people so they know what to look out for when in the market place for a new N95.

The only dead giveaway is the operating software, but with cloned stocks getting mixed in with genuine handsets, even genuine sellers don't know what they are selling, and many will not open the boxes, switch on the device to find out, because then, they could not sell it as new sealed in the box.!

As said, this is a global problem, and you only have to take a look on eBay.com to see for yourself how much of a problem this really is, with sellers not really knowing what they are selling too, stating in their listings as the N95 8GB they are selling is a scaled down version, when in fact, its not even manufactured by Nokia.

New 8GB Clone (June08)

Keep an eye on my blog for updates.  There is also a cloned N96 already out, which again, you can find photos within my blog.