Prometheus 6

Take, for example, the iPhone. The key to its simple interface is a screen that responds to several touches at once. It makes rapid text entry possible and allows keyboard-and-mouse-type navigation through Web pages and the phone's built-in applications. The screen is built by a German company called Balda, but the technology itself, licensed to Apple's supplier, is neither American nor European. It was originally developed to aid in the rapid input of Asia's huge, character-based alphabets. It comes from China.

China's iClone
Dan Koeppel

The little gadget was bootleg gold, a secret treasure I'd spent months tracking down. The miniOne looked just like Apple's iPhone, down to the slick no-button interface. But it was more. It ran popular mobile software that the iPhone wouldn't. It worked with nearly every worldwide cellphone carrier, not just AT&T, and not only in the U.S. It promised to cost half as much as the iPhone and be available to 10 times as many consumers. [P6: emphasis added] The miniOne's first news teases—a forum posting, a few spy shots, a product announcement that vanished after a day—generated a frenzy of interest online. Was it real? When would it go on sale? And most intriguing, could it really be even better than the iPhone?