The China clonephones, Nokla and the like are causing grief amongst unsavy buyers in the west right now. But they will get better, maybe even run Maemo sometime soon! If the quality was up to scratch would you buy one then?

So far they only thing they've shared with real Nokia devices has been the exterior appearance, the N, K, A and a model number. The insides, hw and software, have been entirely different.

If they put some nice hw inside, and make it possible to boot whatever you want on it, I might buy one to play around with. I'd still want real Nokia as main device though.

www.xpphone.com

from a company unheard of, but I dont see why they wont be able to pull it off.
Most goods these days are made in chine, all that matters is how much quality control goes in there to make it look "non-chinese" per say.

That said, even though I havent used a Nokia before, I do believe they have strict quality standards when it comes to build quality.
Their phones are really sturdy and I dont have an inch of doubt that N900 is a rock !

The hardware is generic and can be purchased by any manufacturer...if the software and the design were right why would you buy the brandname stuff?

hardware components for retail products have to be licensed, and chip designers want quite a lot for licenses of their latest hw. that's why every clone so far was inferior to brand products.

but that's not the point i wanted to make in the other thread. of course china's designer will become better over time, and they have every right to try to compete established brands.

however, what i perceive as the main problem is the fact that china currently is under no pressure to enforce even the most basic human rights among its workers. in the long run, that lowers standards worldwide and hurts everybody (apart from a very small and very rich percentage).

There is flip side, which is at least (if not more) unfortunate. The really-really bad thing about sweatshops is not that they exist, but that they are, as sad as it is, often the least-bad option for locals. Press too hard or too much and they will shut down - which will mean that the same amount of people will have even less choice of jobs and thus will be forced to work under even worse conditions.

Also, don't mix human rights with profits. A daily $1 salary is a $1 salary no matter what your rights are (take for example Europe - human rights are largely balanced throughout and still the taxes/salaries in different countries vary quite a bit, making certain countries preferred for new plants and investments).

What defines the "china clonephones" is substandard hardware with crap software at amazing prices. I believe a relevant question is would you want to buy substandard hardware at amazing prices, if they put maemo-like software in it?

I believe for many, the answer is "absolutely, why not?"

However, if they had just-better-than-average prices, it takes a lot more. You don't buy a knockoff at 80% of the price.

Edit:
As to the other questions raised here:
- Human rights violations: as far as I know, the brand products are made in the same environment, sometimes even the same factories. Either you can buy Chinese, or you have to stop using a lot of brands. Which, I admit, might be honorable.

- Copyright laws: lately I have been finding less and less sympathy for copyright and patent holders, based on numerous powerful copyright and patent holders' constant war against their own consumers, as well as abuse of market power. To stop using Chinese products because they violate patents... It somehow doesn't seem as honorable to me.

Also, when it comes to patents, this is sort of complicated, given the fact that patents aren't world wide. It's actually we who'd infringe on the patent by importing the product to a market where the patent is valid.

Why should ANYONE on this planet buy such a "phone"? If i don't have enough money to buy a N900, i'll wait for a contract offer, if even this is too expensive, i'll buy another phone.

I wouldn't even mention those "phones" ...

Because you arn't a target market for these phones; those people that come to you for tech support and/or would like the brand name but cannot afford it are. That market is easily 10-20x bigger than yours.

Its a threat; and one of the reasons why Nokia making Maemo a signifiant part of its strategy is very important.

Well, to consider a parallel market: I have bought several MP3 (MP4) players from China. For the price - say $25 - I got a player that have a lot more features (like video playback) than i.e. the more expensive Ipod shuffle (like... shuffle). It is not a question about either price, software, or quality, it's a question about d) all of the above - what do you get for the money.

I have to say though, if I am to buy a telephone like that, it has to give me some features that I do not expect from a chinese Mokia phone. Most notably localization. A linux distro based phone could do that.