WTF! whats the difference between a "clone" and an "exact replica"?

This must be the answer to the devil-phone (with the 666 day battery backup) from the cellphone gods!

no susprise to me at all. they have been producing loads of phony products and gov does nothing. thats how they do business.

I have an ifone, but I actually like this phone. My friend has it and it's pretty cool to user. I must admit that after using the ifone's keyboard, im a bit spoiled, but this phone is great. Full of features.

The real one... I don't know about the bootleg :).

Damn!...those Chinese are good!...except the Nokia logo appearing a lil cheap,its practically perfect!...even the software is ripped off!!...

As Steve Jobs said - Software is the important bit, not hardware. ;)

aka....what ever the asian make, the hardware can be perfect, but the software still sucks hard.

Seeing how the Italians cloned Chinese noodles when "inventing" spaghetti, and we're cloning The Great Wall in our border-protecting aspirations along Mexico, they're probably just thinking "OK you Western bastards, steal our pastas and walls all you like, but we'll Marco Polo the hell out of your movie and electronics industry in return, so Silk Road that, beeeeoootch!"

I can see cloning the iphone.. It's locked, you have to use apple software (itunes) to get anything on it, and it misses some basic functionality.. which sometimes the clones answer.

but the only reason you'd clone a n95 is to make it cheap. It would be tough to surpass or enhance it's feature set.. I'd doubt the clone has gps, accelerometer, wifi, 5mpxl cam and 3g/UMTS.

what i don't get is, if they can make such good knockoffs, why not just do something original?

@MagicMT: because originality requires creativity and it's more effort and money to design something new.

@endrewsmith1: for $161 i really wouldn't care what the government has to say about it.
I'd rather drop $161 for a phone without the 8GB flashdrive than drop the $700 or however much the black 8GB n95 costs now a days.
This looks just like the real thing but i'd be scared to buy one. I'd buy it if i was rich and didnt care if i lost my money just for fun and mod this one to be as close as possible to the REAL n95.

@Paradise: And also a competitive strong marketing strategy and Brand image too ;-)

if i were rich i'd just buy the real one

The thing is, there is a good chance that this is actually made by Nokia's own licensee in China. When it comes down to it, it's Nokia's fault for not policing their own business. In the end, it's the consumer who sufferers. For all you Cino-phobes, the same s--t would happen in the US - if the US made anything!

[www.volumerate.com]

They have it here for $169.

I've less issues with the Chinese copying the design (which is still wrong) than trying to pass this off as the real thing. At least Meizu doesn't label their copies the same way as the originals.
I can just see some poor sucker falling for this 'BRAND NEW N95' on eBay. Takes all the fun out of on-line bargin hunting.