Most people blindly buy gadgets these days, and our marketers here capitalize on their ignorance of these people and they end up buying substandard stuff. On the other hand, our people like big things, but always want to buy cheap (One of the major reasons Tecno is doing well here). We see a big name device with a cheap price tag, we rejoice in our minds and gladly pay without having any after thought!!. How on earth can you buy a Samsung Galaxy S4 for N35,000 when its obvious the real one is over N90,000 ?
It hurts me to see people I know throw away money on fake gadgets or making uninformed purchases they end up regretting. It even hurts more when you handle the phone, go through it and see watered down specs, annoying chinko loud sounds,and funny looking UI customizations.
The thing is, there are Chinese-made clones of virtually any flagship device you can think of. These people can copy hardware shape and look almost to perfection. So before making any purchases, you have to be sure what you’re buying is the real thing. Here are a few tips:
1.) Check the packaging for spelling errors like the Samsung Galaxy Ntoe below 
2.)Check the internals, put on the phone, the booting animation should show the brand name of the gadget and not Android or any other thing else.
3.)Go straight to Settings>Apps, Swipe from left to right 2 times to reveal the RAM size of the phone or tab. I personally noticed, in these Chinese clones, the RAM is always lesser than that of the original one. So once you see the RAM size is lesser, drop it. A friend of mine bought a cloned Samsung Galaxy S3. This cloned one had just 512MB of RAM, while the genuine one is 1GB RAM. I’ve also come across a cloned Samsung Galaxy S4 with 1GB RAM as opposed to the real one with 2GB RAM.
Below are shots of the cloned and real Galaxy S4 side by side.Real one is pink while the cloned one is white.
Notice the physical similarities, the poorer display, bigger bezel on the clone, and other subtle differences.
4.) If you would have the chance, try and install this app on the phone to reveal the real specs Android Hardware Info. Then use it to compare with the genuine one.
Finally, before buying any gadget (phones especially), make a little research, go online and visit reputable sites like GsmArena. Google about your future purchase, read user reviews and comments before splurging your cash. If you don’t have online access, there must be one or two techy dudes you can ask for assistance or suggestions.
Personally, I think its even better to buy a Tecno, Gionee, etc than buying these clones. Our people say ,“Fly wey no get adviser, e dey follow coffin kpeme for inside grave.”
Photo credits: @andyameh, @Bhotchocolate
