Fake bits and bobs creep into life. Fake Ray-Bans from Bangkok, fake micro pigs that just never stop growing, maybe even the odd knock-off designer outfit (because who wants to actually ruin a Gucci purse or Evisu jeans on a backpacking trip!) trickles into our world. But when it comes to gadgets, we’re all in it for the real thing.

There are plenty of cheap versions of smartphones, but the likes of the Orange Rio II or Sydney never pretend to be anything other than low cost shadows of the Blackberry Curve and Samsung Galaxy II. Fake gadgets aren’t strictly big business in the U.K (even though we buy laptops and heaps of phones, our sell for cash service has yet to come across even a half-convincing fraud) but elsewhere in the world entire industries exist for one reason – gadget cloning.

“And tonight Matthew, the HDC A9100’s going to be…

… The Samsung Galaxy SII!”

Costing around half that of the Samsung Galaxy SII, the HDC interloper is a Chinese dual-SIM phone with 4.3-inch capacitive screen and dual camera,  powered by dual-core MT6573 processor and running on Android 2.3, it even has access to Google’s Android market. The device is easily spotted as a fake before reaching our sell for cash ranks because of the HDC logo in place of Samsung’s own. Aside from that it’s almost a carbon copy.

And that’s just one example. There’s a great list of popular mobile phone clones here http://ibnlive.in.com/photogallery/4886.html

We buy laptops, smartphones, tablets, cameras and gadgets from loads of top manufacturers, but we’re only interested in the real deal (so that fake “iPhone” from your backpacking trip won’t be finding a new home in our sell for cash nest!)