While the real Apple Watch likely won’t hit shelves for another couple of month, at least one Chinese company is making a knockoff, and it was available at CES 2015 for the rock bottom price of $27.
In the back of one of the smaller halls at CES, a Chinese company was showing off fake Apple Watches. So, naturally, I bought one.
The watch, created by Shenzhen-based Hyperdon is actually called “Smart Watch,” and it almost looks like the real deal — at least, upon first glance.
Bell reports the screen only displays when its turned on, and many of the icons on the device’s screen are blatant ripoffs of the Apple-designed icons on the real Apple Watch.
Bell was able to pair the device with her iPhone 6 via Bluetooth, and she was able to play music, and even make calls via the device, heck, it even vibrated to notify her of an incoming call.
The watch includes a pedometer, a stopwatch, an alarm, and a function called “Anti lost.” The feature has an option to “enable” or “disable,” but didn’t visibly do anything. She believes it may alert you when the watch and your phone get out of range of each other.
The watch also features a messaging and notifier feature that allows notifications from WeChat and similar apps, however Bell reports the function required downloading a “sketchy-looking” app to the iPhone, so she didn’t attempt that.
The watch charges via a usb cable, and a Hyperdon representative told Bell that battery life for the watch is “more than 180 hours.”
Bell described making her purchase, in what sounds like a back-alley drug deal. The Hyperdon representative didn’t remove her sunglasses the entire time, which if you’ve ever watched a ’70s Roger Corman movie, you know that’s suspicious in itself.
The rep even tried to get an extra three bucks out of Bell when she came back from the ATM with the cash for the watch. (The transaction required cash, another requirement of your finer back-alley merchandise deals.)
Hyperdon reportedly sells its products at U.S. and China retail stores, (like more of the latter than the former), but the rep didn’t elaborate on the type of stores in which one could find a fake Apple Watch.
Damn, I wish I hadn’t seen this report! Now I really kinda want a fake Apple Watch. I’ll even pay the extra three bucks!
