It’s sometimes hard to retaliate when your opponent is tongue-in-cheek in its opposition, coupling its activities with a large measure of humor. Or so it seems with the intrepid manufacturers on the Chinese mainland. We don’t know who they’re trying to bamboozle with their newest “Sumsang Omnia”, but one thing’s for sure: I wouldn’t put it past a tech geek to crack a grin upon reading or hearing this product’s name.

Spot the difference! Winner gets to take home a smaller dose of sarcasm on your way to the end of this article.

We’re all used to the copycat scene: have a popular enough product, and someone on the Chinese mainland is bound to make a passable copy of it. “Passable” in this case of course means it looks like the real thing – if you stand around 15 feet away. Any closer and you start noticing peculiarities and start to crack that little grin I was talking about in the previous paragraph.

This pic shows the blue light in glorious detail, including the extraneous light coming from between the screen and the control buttons.

Take this particular Omnia for example – having just acquired a real one (Samsung, not Sumsang) just a few months back, I immediately noticed the blue LED leaking through a horrendous gap between the screen and the bottom call and end element of the phone. Then it hit me: the Omnia doesn’t have blue LEDs… The separate stylus was also curiously blocky, not at all like the smooth pen-like shape of the one on my own Omnia. And would you look at that: it has a different model number! Presumably a vastly improved one, 8 generations down the line as evidenced by the addition of an “8” to the Omnia’s nominal SGH-i900 designation.

Dual sims for the win! You can't even get this feature on a real Omnia.

Other features include a Windows Mobile look-alike, probably counterfeit OS, a 2.4” (down from 3.0”) 320 x 240 display (not sure if it’s a touchscreen), a err… 13MP camera, a micro USB slot, and other normal additions you’d expect to find in any electronic device coming out of China – MP3 player, some simple games, and the like. Oh yeah get this: if you thought the Omnia just didn't have what it takes to win you over, say with dual sim capability, and a whopping discounted price of $120, then this version is the one to get.
All the above naturally has the slightest tinge of sarcasm, but this is mixed up with a dollop of admiration and a spoonful of resignation.

Admittedly, packaging and looks have come a long way, but if you get duped into buying this...

After all, unless laws governing such kinds of “copy-cat-ing” reach draconian levels, this kind of activity is sure to continue unabated for the foreseeable future. Then again, perhaps the very reason we don’t have these draconian laws is because these manufacturers are doing all of us a favor by keeping the so-called “real deals” on their toes, to continue pumping out quality and excellent feature sets in a bid to stay ahead of both competition and copy-masters.

A picture of the real thing.

After all, it’s a safe bet to say that the only people who will end up owning one of these are those who really know what they’re getting into and accept it as it is, along with the inevitably lower price, plus those who don’t know better and won’t know better in the future – they’d deserve to own a copy if that were the case.