[Hardware Hacking General] vantt1:
I don't know where to post this thread...

This will be my first ever kinda proper review. It's still incomplete, and I will amend it later. The text corresponds to the image below it. It may be a bit hard to follow, but you can pair them up judging from the context.

The Gooapple i5S, as can be deducted from the name, is an Apple iPhone 5S knockoff that runs Android, hence Goo(gle)+apple i(Phone)5S. I bought it with the intention of using all those fancy iPhone accessories like cases and stuff. It is more or less 1:1 to the real iPhone, and has a nice aluminium construction (although it is obviously not as well made as the real thing). And although not explicitly stated by the seller, this phone also looks like it uses the real, reversible lightning connector found on the newer iOS devices (which is true). The cost was $122.55 + $26.61 EMS postage, making it a total of $149.16 (all in USD).

Specifications at a glance:

MediaTek MT6572 chipset @ 1.2GHz, dual core (the highest I've experienced is 1 GHz)

Android 4.2.2 heavily modified to look and work like iOS 7

512 MB RAM

4.0" 854x480 LED backlit display (looks like TFT judging from the viewing angles)

Glass (not plastic) touchscreen with 5-point multitouch

8 GB internal storage (more on this later)

8 MP back + 1.3 MP front cameras with dual LED flash (front camera is probably 5 MP digitally upscaled to 8 MP)

1400 mAh battery (quoted, actually 1200 mAh)

Uses a single nano SIM, supposedly operating at GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz and WCDMA 850/2100MHz (it can make phone calls fine)

Has WiFi a/b/g/n, Bluetooth (2.1) and GPS

FM radio (doesn't work)

Feel free to ask about other stuff!

In the box: knockoff Apple EarPods, Lightning to USB Cable, SIM eject tool and a fake iPhone 5 Quick Start Guide.

Outside of the box (posted in the same parcel, but wrapped outside of the box): A cheap AC to USB adapter with plug that probably corresponds to the country of your postal address.

This knockoff iPhone 5S uses the real Lightning connector! It charges fine, and can probably use non-iOS 7 compatible Lightning cables. Chances are the one bundled is not iOS 7 compatible.

When you first turn on the phone, you are greeted with the Apple boot logo. To be specific, it is the one with the black Apple logo and the white background that is found on the white and champagne gold iPhone 5S and the white iPhone 5 running iOS 7. The developers of this heavily customised version of Android were probably too lazy to differentiate the space grey boot logo with the black background and white Apple logo from the other, maybe because this Gooapple is available in three colours; space grey, white and champagne gold.

When the phone finishes booting, the iPhone Tri-tone message tone can be heard as the boot sound, then you are met with the iOS 7 style lockscreen. Unlocking it laggily (if that's a word) transitions to the iOS 7 style launcher. It scrolls with a lot of lag. Dragging down on the homescreen reveals the spotlight search bar, just like in iOS 7.

Some of the apps you see in the picture below were installed by me (the file manager, root checker and iLauncher).

The layout of the Settings app is unlike what you normally see in Android. Instead, it has been modified to look and work just like the one in iOS 7.

Double tapping the "home" button on the homescreen reveals an iOS 7 style task manager than swipes both up AND down to kill an app, as opposed to the swipe-up-only one in iOS 7.

Interesting thing about the home button; single tapping it actually sends the "back" command to Android. Double tapping it sends a "home" command, and long pressing it sends a "menu" command. Single tap then long pressing it will bring up Voice Command. It does not have Touch ID.

Pretty much all the system applications are stylised to look like iOS 7, such as the dialer, calculator, stopwatch, calendar, music player, gallery (or photos, as named in this system).

It does not have root out-of-the-box, and I can't say when there will be a method to root it.

Pressing the home button+power button does indeed take a screenshot.

This phone has one especially handy feature - a working silent/vibrate toggle switch. I don't know any Android phone that have one.

The touchscreen has 5-point multitouch. Plenty for a 4" screen, if you ask me.

If you know me a bit, then you'll know how much I like taking things apart. It took me a while to figure out how to disassemble this knockoff. I tried undoing the two pentalobe (yes, real star-shaped pentalobe) screws on the bottom and prying the screen's frame from the aluminium shell just like you would on a real iPhone, to no avail. The top and bottom seemed to be especially stuck, and I almost broke the phone trying to open it by force.

Then I tried heating it up using a hot air gun and separating the glass itself from the frame. The home button fell out, then I lifted the bottom of the screen away from the frame, and I saw that the cables were connected along the top edge. I also saw one other thing; screw holes that corresponded to screws on the other side of the frame.

So instinctively, I pryed off the glass inserts on the back of the Gooapple, and they turned out to be plastic held in place by double sided sticky tape. As it turns out, there is one relatively large screw in each corner of the phone holding it together. Unscrewing these made the disassembly a sinch (cinch?).

The seller said in the product description that this phone has a 1400 mAh battery. Tearing it down proved that it was a lie. 1200 mAh is clearly printed on it, and there is empty space above the battery, probably to accommodate for a 1400 mAh battery.

The silent switch is much simpler than the real thing. All it is is an open/close circuit switch that closes the circuit when the switch is switched to vibrate, and opens when it is not.

Oh, what's this? A Micro SD slot?

Yes, it is! It's not cheapo, either. It's a Kingston 8 GB SDHC Class 4! Which means I can upgrade it! I'm guessing the maximum is 32 GB, the SDHC limit. I will try 64 GB though, when I backup my existing one.

Putting it into a computer showed that the system does not reside here. It has its own real internal ROM separate from the Micro SD.

I only had a 64 MB Micro SD lying around at the time, so I put it in and restarted the phone (as it was not designed to have a hot-swappable SD card). It was revealed to me that the capacity stayed the same regardless of what card you put in, but the 'Available' storage is accurate.

This concludes my "review" for now. I know it wasn't much; all I did was play around with the phone and take pictures along the way, then commenting on them here. I didn't intend to write a review, so as a result, it didn't flow very well and wasn't very comprehensive. So please feel free to ask away!

Thanks for reading up until the end!