Not All Smart Phones are “Smart”

Everyone understands that different mobile phones have different capabilities. Smart phones can range from something pretty simple with texting capability, to something that does almost everything except make coffee and wash the car. These are basic choices that everyone needs to make in order to choose a mobile phone.

There are phones on the market that are not what they seem. That iPhone may not be a real iPhone. Your new BlackBerry may have all of the outward appearances of the real thing, but when you pay to download your favorite TV show, your BlackBerry videos may not work.

So what happened? You may have bought an imitation smart phone. It looks like an actual smart phone, but when you really put it to the test, it might not be so smart.

Companies, like Motorola, Research in Motion (the people who make BlackBerry), and Samsung spend millions of dollars every year doing research and development (R&D). R&D for mobile phone manufacturers involves developing new chips, new phone designs and new software so that their device is ahead of anyone else’s. It is research and development that is the reason behind the time lag between iPhone releases, the next generation of Android devices and Microsoft Windows Phone platforms. It’s the R&D that makes the real phone so expensive.

As soon as a new device is released, it is taken apart and manufacturers in China attempt to make the same device for less money.

This happens for several reasons:

Trademark, copyright, and patent laws in China are rarely enforced. Consider what big news it is when a company that copies faked movies gets busted in China. The government of China has been more lax about enforcing international patent laws than most other countries.
Labor costs in China are relatively low. There may be many different reasons for this and it is open for debate which reasons are true or not, but the fact remains that it costs less to make things in China.
Fake component parts for smart phones are also less expensive. One of the latest real smart phones contains an Intel processor. The Chinese-made version contains a much less expensive and, presumably, less effective chip.

For some people, purchasing a less expensive, Chinese-made smart phone is the best way to get most of the capabilities they want. However, it is a buyer beware situation. What you think was made by a major corporation may not have been and if it gives you trouble, that company will not be able to help you.