China’s Xiaomi Phone Gets Cloned, But Probably an Online Scam

It's a scam! The Dami phone spam ads that use photoshopped Xiaomi images.

The Chinese startup Xiaomi seems to have hit the big-time – it now has its own local clone. Or, rather, it appears to have a clone called Dami, but it’s likely just an online scam and should be avoided totally.

Promo images for the supposed ‘Dami phone’ are floating around the Chinese web, and are actually using pictures and graphics stolen from Xiaomi. All the scammers are doing is photoshopping the ‘Mi’ branding off of the Xiaomi phone, and changing the images’ logo a bit. Its probably non-existent phone claims all the same impressive specs as the Xiaomi phone, but the Dami price tag is just 1,699 RMB – a full 300 yuan cheaper than the original.

But, of course, this is a scam, so that’s 1,699 RMB that you might as well flush down the toilet – because what you’ll get in the mail from Dami – if they bother sending you anything at all; or perhaps a brick in your parcel – is some random shanzhai phone that’ll bear no aesthetic or technical resemblance to the Xiaomi M1 device.

As so often occurs with these scammers – there are lots of iPhone scam sites around as well – they’ll include one image of the genuine article in their spammy ads. In the case of the Dami, it’s this double screenshot of the web browser:

The only honest image in the whole Dami spam campaign is this lousy web browser which certainly isn't anything like the Android-powered Xiaomi.

That crappy thing isn’t the browser on the Android-powered MIUI phone, and looks more like the UI on some old JAVA OS phone. In fact, that’s probably what you’ll get in the mail – a sketchy old JAVA-powered thing with a flakey Android skin.

So, here’s the public service announcement in summary: the Dami, whatever it is and if it even truly exists at all, is a scam.

[Hat-tip to Sohu IT news for spotting this; all images from spam posted to various Chinese BBS]