Exclusive: GooPhone i5 Hands on photos

Is it shock resistant or it will break if going down from your hands to the floor?

I dislike Apple, so the idea of a ripped-off apple phone bearing someone else’s branding at a fraction of the cost appeals to me. With this in mind, I bought myself a Goophone Y5 (iphone 4S clone) while Goophone ummed and ahhed about their release dates for the Goophone i5.

At first glance, the very well-regarded Goophone Y5 was awesome. Crisp Retina screen, a very accurate IOS skin on top of Android 2.whatever-it-is. I chucked in my sim card and that’s when my woes began… I couldn’t stand all the Chinese language menus and icons. I ended up rooting the phone, trying various ROMs and eventually after a period of three weeks (including two weeks with a bricked phone), I had it to a point where it was running an IOS 6.0 skin. But unfortunately, one of the “fixes” I had tried while the phone was bricked was to try and activate a reset button said to be in the headphone jack port. To do this I bent a paperclip and went to town. Being the heavy-handed barbarian that I am, I pushed too hard and apparently poked a hole in the battery – I could smell it.

Despite the greatly-reduced battery life and the angst around how badly I had messed up, the phone was running great. Everything I needed worked as it should – phone, SMS, MP3, Video, 5MP camera in still and video modes. All was right with the world so I decided to buy some accessories – I picked up a replacement Apple-branded back cover (I had ordered a Goophone one in a moment of anti-corporate badassery), an Otterbox Defender case, etc.

Eventually the battery life became an issue for me so I ordered a replacement OEM iPhone 4S battery off Amazon and a soldering iron. After I had all the bits and pieces I needed, I followed a tutorial on youtube and got to work. Somehow, somewhere, I’d screwed it up – everything went together OK, but no power. I desoldered and tried a couple more times – still no power. Dejected, I removed the replacement battery and the original Goophone circuit board, ordered another replacement battery (in case I’d broken the first one) and put the phone away while waiting for it all to arrive.

It was my dad’s birthday a couple of weeks ago and he wanted an iPad Mini. I was keen to check them out while waiting for the Goophone version I was planning to buy, and while I was at the store, I saw an unlocked 16Gb iPhone 5 sitting there mocking me. I bought the iPad Mini AND the iPhone 5 and funnily enough I was able to register it and use it straight away. No bricking, no ROMs, no mods, no replacement batteries, no chinese language reset and boot menus, but most of all – no waiting.

I was extremely keen on the Goophone i5 but after my experience with trying to get the Goophone Y5 to a basic, workable English-language standard, I’m not prepared to screw around with the i5 – when I buy something I want it to be as good as it can be, straight out of the box. If I was Chinese, then I’d buy two Goophone i5s, but being Caucasian and living in Australia, the language thing is a dealbreaker for me. Reading Andi’s excellent review on the Goophone i5 has just cemented my opinion. It’s exactly the same story as with the Goophone Y5 – an excellent phone, but one which requires a hell of a lot of screwing around with rooting/modding before you’ll be happy with it. If it was $100 maybe, but not at $250.

No Goophone i5 for me, not until they have a 100% English language (not Chinglish) IOS skin. If they can do that, then I’ll happily sell my iPhone 5 and grab a Goophone i5 and heartily recommend them to everyone I know.