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Meet the smartphone that rips off Apple and Samsung in one fell swoop

Updated Dec 19th, 2018 8:55PM EST
Gold-east Octa Core Smartphone

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Xiaomi is a China-based smartphone company that has grown to become the most valuable startup in the world by shamelessly ripping off Apple’s devices, its style and even its launch and marketing strategies. But even Xiaomi isn’t as shameless as another China-based smartphone maker called Gold-east. You’ve never heard of the company before and you’ll probably never see one of its products in person, but we had to take a moment to stand back in awe of the company’s masterful simultaneous trolling of both of the world’s top smartphone makers.

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Some say Samsung is a copycat, and there’s no question that Apple’s devices have at least influenced many of Samsung’s designs over the years. The company even crafted a secret 132-page document to help it copy Apple’s iPhone pixel by pixel. But nothing Samsung has ever done was as blatant as Xiaomi’s Apple robberies.

Now, the bar has been raised yet again.

Meet the “Gold-east 5″ Octa core smart phone.” The name is oddly straight-forward, and the device is even more oddly familiar. Where oh where have we seen these designs before?

That’s right — this ridiculous handset is basically a flattened iPhone 5 made of plastic that runs Android skinned with a blatant ripoff of Samsung’s TouchWiz user interface.

Kudos, Gold-east.

The phone is powered by a low-cost 1.4GHz octa-core processor and features a 5-inch 720p display, 1GB of RAM, a 5-megapixel rear camera, a 2-megapixel front-facing camera, Android 4.4.2 KitKat and a 2,000 mAh battery.

Gold-east’s phone costs just $114 on Alibaba, though the company requires a minimum order of 1,000 units.

Zach Epstein
Zach Epstein Executive Editor

Zach Epstein has been the Executive Editor at BGR for more than 10 years. He manages BGR’s editorial team and ensures that best practices are adhered to. He also oversees the Ecommerce team and directs the daily flow of all content. Zach first joined BGR in 2007 as a Staff Writer covering business, technology, and entertainment.

His work has been quoted by countless top news organizations, and he was recently named one of the world's top 10 “power mobile influencers” by Forbes. Prior to BGR, Zach worked as an executive in marketing and business development with two private telcos.