Chinese iPhone on pure Android - completely useless in 2022?

It's 2022, and the Chinese iPhone running on stock Android is obsolete, right?. Apple products formerly had a certain cachet in Russia, serving as a symbol of social status and financial success for its owners. Even on the secondary market, not everyone could afford an iPhone when the dollar was at 30 since the initial batches of the iPhone 4, 4s, and 5 cost tens of thousands of rubles. 

Many individuals in society had iPhones, including the wealthy, the indebted, the crafty, and the foolhardy. One of them will be discussed today: pure Android 2022 iPhone 5s knockoffs. Both the how and the why are not clear. For more, check out the article:

It was a historic moment

I mentioned a little anecdote concerning the advent of such knockoffs in Russia in an article I wrote about the Chinese iPhone 4s. The Chinese were aware of CIS consumers' desire for low prices and the allure of a flashy design at the expense of practicality. That's why we have gadgets like the Nokia TV E72 (vote on whether you like it or not at the conclusion of the post! Remember to cast your ballots).

Duplicate hiding beneath a N95; the genuine article was a slider.

Concealed as a N95, the real thing was a slider

TV-E72

The chipsets varied from one device to the next; some supported TV, others wifi, still others Java (apparently only in more costly versions, even though they all use the same chipsets), and yet others supported their own platforms (MRE and MRP), making them effectively half smartphones. Because MRPs are installed directly into the phone, they have access to all of the device's features (much as elves in Siemens phones). For this platform, for instance, there existed a passable NES emulator, and its SDK and sample code are still available online (which came with some E72 TVs).

Check out the apparatus down below as well:

TV-E71

It bears the Nokia, VAIO, and Walkman trademarks but is essentially a carbon copy of the E72 described in the previous paragraph. Even though the same casing was used for several phones, each device's display had a slightly distinct layout (pinout, cable length, and screen size) and was controlled by a unique display chip. Additionally, the board layouts, cameras, etc., might be different, yet the same software could support many controllers such as the ili9325 and ili9340. If the table of display initialization instructions is modified, however, the firmware from the "cool" edition E72 may theoretically be run on a less capable device.

The last time anything like this was hip and happening was around a decade to a few years ago. MediaTek launched the first smartphone armv5 chipset, the mt6516, but it didn't stop the Chinese from developing their own. Originally designed as a communicator chipset, Android has now been adapted to it. In 2010 and 2011, devices on it, such a knockoff HD2:

Additionally, Xperia Arc:

They were sluggish devices, but they still counted. They were also in high demand. I've been on the hunt for such a tool for quite some time, but haven't come across it yet (:( When I do, you can bet I'll be having a resurrection and a review to celebrate:)

Before the iPhone, there were Chinese smartphones like the Daxian x999 (also known as A88,s688,hiphone169,t32 / Daxian X999 /cool 999,cec Iphone), which was a knockoff that ran on Windows Mobile (if you're dead and you don't feel bad about it, it would be great if you sent me to revive:) I've never seen such a game).

And here is a near sibling, a 5800 clone on the same WM (I don’t know whether things got farther than the concept):

Here I've simply covered the introduction of Chinese cellphones; but, what about the emergence of Chinese knockoffs of Apple's iPhone? Purchasing a counterfeit iPhone 4 or 4S on Android is impossible today due to the presence of fire, and everything else was more convoluted.

 (I discovered it on a popular message board, some kid was selling it, and we were about to make a deal until he deleted the ad and started singing me the morning star in private message.) However, a 5/5s knockoff is much simpler to come by. Sometimes even functioning. So I went out and got this gadget:

The gadget utilises the low-end 2013 chipset MT6572 and 512MB of RAM. Similar to the iOS 7 operating system but based on Android 4.2's Jellybean.

The Chinese, as usual, have shown their sagacity. A cheaper 256 MB NAND (only for the system) and an 8 GB flash drive can do the job just as well as the more costly 8 GB eMMC memory. It's no joke that you can take apart the gadget and install a 32GB flash drive. Apple guidelines, how do you feel about that?

In the finest ionic style, Zakos breaks under ios. You can use it, but it won't be particularly convenient, especially because there is no back button; nevertheless, you can get around the lack of a back button by repeatedly invoking Assistive Touch.

Since this is a site about restoring and altering obsolete electronics, I propose using the firmware from a device running the same operating system.

Establishing order

Since the drivers are statically generated with the kernel, the first step in porting is locating a donor device from which to transplant the kernel, and then, if required, updating the wrapper libraries for Android subsystems (such as the sound subsystem; I didn't start it with half a kick). 

You also need to modify the modem firmware, otherwise the network may not start or there will be just one SIM, and set the DPI). The system.img image must be rebuilt and flashed with the SP Flash Tool repeatedly until it is correct. About an hour and a half of actual time was required, and the "donor" firmware needed to be based on the same kernel and chipset (but there are exceptions).

Chinese manufacturers took a novel approach to the device's storage capacity by including a 256MB NAND chip for the device's software and a 4GB microSD card for user data, rather than the more conventional 2/4GB of on-board storage (microsd is cheaper).

 Similar to how transferring firmware from a smartphone with the same chipset would not work, Android 4 weights at least 400mb, thus the Chinese placed a cut of Android, particularly for this platform. Furthermore, ubifs is used instead of ext4 on this platform, which means it cannot be unpacked in Windows and mounted on Linux without resorting to workarounds. Because of this, I set out to find an android, or anything close to one.

 And I recalled that the closest equivalent was the Chinese-made knockoffs of the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini and S4 Mini (typically running on the 6571 and 6577 chipsets). Once I located a Chinese "Samsung" firmware for the same hardware platform, I stitched the picture using recovery (which I had already transferred from another device). Recovery is the same basic premise. 

Exactly the same boot as img. jpg, but each with its different kernel — we swap kernels and flash a fresh recovery to get rid of bootlap, or perpetual loading. I did a second round of formatting for the data and cache, and everything worked immediately. It's great that the Chinese were able to save on internal storage and yet include an outstanding IPS matrix, which is obviously on par with or better than AAA replicas of the original.

There's no need to believe that. a great deal worse than the original. There's no need to believe that. also far worse than the original. There's no need to believe that.

The firmware update has begun, however there is currently no output from the speaker or microphone. Worse then, what should we do? We make some modifications to the donor modem firmware, then transfer the corresponding libraries from /lib/hw drain, and everything starts up and runs well. To sum up the results, we get:

That cheap Android phone of yours just took off in the air. Xiaomi RedMi devices of every kind are sleeping, throttling on their underpowered eight Helio A22 processor cores. Although not all programmes are compatible, I will show you that this one is usable.

Unfortunately, the browser has trouble with secure (certificate-based) contemporary sites, although it still performs well in other respects. The remainder of the UI is well-designed and easy to use; it presents itself as effortlessly as a dialer or a mobile phone player. Since the firmware was originally developed for a device with 256MB of RAM, the amount of available RAM is sufficient (usually users of such devices were content with 70-80MB of free RAM).

Games

Instead of running dozens of benchmarks and games, I stuck to just a few that I had previously ran in 2012:

The highly destructible Granny Smith arcade machine has finally been turned on. The game runs nicely and is fun to use. The game stopped up visibly on iOS.

Hello from 2011 in SpeedX 3D! The game is not very fluid (it does not freeze, but the player continuously slows down / accelerates) due to the delta time jambs and the floaty CPU load in the background. However, in most cases, play is permitted. Even more extreme delta jamming problems plagued the game on "IOS," transforming it into a turn-based affair.

Subway Surfers was a popular topic of conversation in that era's classrooms. Moves merrily, without of any noticeable flourishes. Identical sentiments as those expressed in 2012. Having such a sleek screen to play on is a real treat.

Kate Mobile, the soft version of VKontakte, is doing quite well.

Both Whatsapp and Telegram may be used, however they are sluggish. Messenger apps may be used on a smartphone.

conclusions

I have said that Chinese knockoffs running Android disguised as previous years' flagships are really useful to me. They're intriguing to excavate and develop in a unique way. In particular, I like gadgets that use the Spreadtrum chipset (there was a review, see profile) since they are terribly flawed out of the box but can be brought to perfection with the same satisfaction as when someone purchases a dead Zhiguli from your hands. And then there's the combination: the sleek form factor of an iPhone in a metal casing, 1 in 1 size, with a nice display and a smart android built in.