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Chinese smartphone maker claims Apple copied iPhone 6 design

Digione-iPhone-01

Chinese smartphone maker Digione is claiming Apple’s iPhone 6 and 6 Plus copy the design of its own smartphone line.

Macworld reports that the company published a letter online yesterday that was originally sent to Apple back in September in order to make them aware that the latest iPhones might infringe on a patent it was granted in July by China’s State Intellectual Property Office.

Digione’s device is sold under its 100+ brand in China as a low-end device (around $130 US), sports a 5.5-inch display, and runs Android. It also comes in a selection of colors that aren’t unlike the latest iPhone color options (pictured above), although those were first introduced with the iPhone 5s in 2013. The company reportedly filed for its patent application back in January before it was granted in the summer of this year. 

Apple apparently hasn’t been very responsive to Digione’s claims, which is why the company has now decided to publish the letter in hopes to drum up attention. In the letter, Digione said it hoped “communication with goodwill would contribute to solving potential legal disputes.”

It’s certainly not the only Chinese company selling devices that look like iOS devices, however the design covered in Digione’s patent appears to be a much more generic design when removing the color options similar to iPhone:

To top it all off, the sales page for the Digione device appears to be quite obviously influenced by Apple’s own website design. We’re guessing this won’t be the last we hear of this. 

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Comments

  1. philcparry - 9 years ago

    Erm … Yeah … Right.

  2. gen0music - 9 years ago

    Well Apple started the litigation war. If they sue in China it might be a real bad blow to Apple.

  3. They obviously want publicity…
    The iPhone design was known way wayyy before it came out, I’m pretty sure they planned it from day one.
    You shouldn’t publish this nonsense.

    • Ken Hoey - 9 years ago

      Why shouldn’t they publish it? They publish rubbish for Apple making statements that Samsung copies them…same crap!

      • retablo5 - 9 years ago

        Well, Samsung DID copy Apple. Everyone has seen their smartphones pre-iPhone, then after.

      • Ken, are you serious, troll, dumb or blind?

      • ikronous - 9 years ago

        What so really embarrassing for Apple on that note is that Samsung had launched the first 3.5″ Touchscreen smartphone with gestures and no physical keyboard, sporting a Single Round Home Button, Dual Cameras front n back for video chat/mail, Stainless Steel metal band around it that they also used as an external antenna (like iPhone 4 four years later) with Internal and automatic switching. The SGH-Z610 also had full GPS a year before iPhone launched with only Google Maps tower location method. This phone was also 3G, only when it went through FCC, no US carriers had 3G towers up. Having just recently held Auctions where Google was chosen by FCC to lead the bidding frequency auctions.

        Yet to hear these Apple revisions speak and look at the pictures of smartphones Apple presented in court didn’t include this phone. Why? Because it was so far ahead of it’s time with a remote control for media being the only button access to playing videos and music remotely minus a physical keyboard. You used primarily touch gestures on the SGH-Z610. If carriers wouldn’t have been so afraid of it, using so much data on 3G they didn’t even have yet. They would have sold a ton of them and this had to do with a multimedia phone (like iPod with phone features) that had already been introduced a whole year before iPhone!!! …..now just who do these Apple Revisionist think about that? Oh….. they’ll tell you, Apple had that touchscreen multimedia player phone design in mind since before the Dawn of Time!

        Yeah right! lol…. Apple has never been first at anything. Everything they do is only after the market gets established for mp3 players (they stole all of that iPod stuff too) and they’d never made a phone before and suddenly were relying on Samsung, LG and others to give them the technology and parts to compete against them. Only iPhones were weak, no GPS, no 3G, no App store (even carriers had app stores and so did game consoles) till the following year. Because they found out Google was going to have a store at launch of their first phone. Plus the pathetic assumption that Android wasn’t for touchscreen smartphones to begin with. Oh…. and what do you call HP Compaq’s iPaq, but a touchscreen smartphone iPaq ran WinMo, but you could also install Linux on it. In fact the first Touchscreen Tablet in 2000 actually ran on Linux and just what do iDiots think Android is based on? Yeah a Linux kernel that already had Touchscreen Framework right in it’s monolithic kernel roots. That’s the difference too. NeXT was a hybrid Mach microkernel with monolithic FreeBSD Source code, that couldn’t just have touchscreen framework jacked into it and Apple didn’t even start on iOS stripped down conversion for phone’s with touchscreens until November/December 2004. Just 6 months prior to Google buying Android, because Andy Ruben was having trouble getting Sun give him a java license!!!

    • smigit - 9 years ago

      This phone looks like it had designs being submitted back in Jan however, which would probably predate the iPhone 6 leaks.

      That said, I’d love to see them argue that this doesn’t look exactly like an iPod Touch without a home button. The lack of antenna bands makes it look closer to the iPods than Apples own phones do to their device.

      • ikronous - 9 years ago

        iPod Touch was not a phone and the profile side shot looked nothing like iPhone or any phone that simply wasn’t capable of housing all the hardware to be a phone!!! …..and the lack of plastic bands is obviously because they used material that wouldn’t kill cell phone signal for calling, that iPod Touch didn’t have to worry about. If anything you could say the design of iPhone 5c is more like it. But still we’re not talking about a clone, that is almost an exact rip off of the copied product. Apple wasn’t even the first to use plastic antenna bands in metal smartphones. HTC M7 had them a whole year prior and there were many Chinese Brands that looked like Apple may have stole/cloned their design before this one!
        http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/8-things-in-the-apple-iphone-6-that-arent-really-new/articleshow/42175870.cms

  4. Enough is enough. Gtfo Chinese rip-offs!

    • ikronous - 9 years ago

      Apple is the Biggest Ripoff Artist ever in technology. Remember Steve Jobs was shameless about stealing ideas from competitors….. he said! …..and that was all in his defense of stealing PARC’s GUI and Mouse!

      So don’t tell us about Chinese rip-offs, because Apple has been ripping off everybody in the smartphones industry for years. You don’t think out of 1000’s of competitors in China they Apple hasn’t already gone after ripping off the Chinese. After all don’t forget the Chinese have been inventing things for over 6 to 7000 years. They invented gun power, rockets, and about 70% of all musical instruments have their roots in Chinese culture. They invented the first real paper and they had toilet paper long before westerners (including Europeans) figured out they could use something besides their hands or scratchy leaves in the woods! …..so come, quit trying to be like lame American Elitists who think Apple invented everything before the dawn of time. I’m sure your own culture has contributed more to society than Apple has!

      • jrox16 - 9 years ago

        God you’re ignorant. Xerox INVITED him there to show him their GUI because they didn’t know what to do with it. He did being the visionary he was, and they made a deal. There was no stealing or copying. Read a friggen book man…

        http://zurb.com/article/801/steve-jobs-and-xerox-the-truth-about-inno

      • ikronous - 7 years ago

        Absolutely not the truth and I know for a fact what took place, because I have a relative hired by Steve Jobs himself right out of graduating Summa Cum Laude (w/ highest honors)…. and she was indeed a ‘numbered employee’ still listed in Apple’s Alumni today.

        Steve Jobs was out soliciting funding for ‘Lisa Project’. The whole reason Jobs went to Xerox and specifically their PARC Labs in Palo Alto, California only a few miles from Apple’s campus in Cupertino. I know also because I got introduced to several engineers working at PARC at the time. The reason was simple; PARC gave Xerox badly needed write offs as a Research (R&D Tax Shelter).

        Because….. Corporate Tax Rate back then was 70% and being a major CASH RICH Corporation, they needed more of that CASH….. protected under Research Tax Shelters.

        Xerox had the CASH…. Apple needed invested to get Lisa Project started in 1979. Under tax laws back then, the Beefalo Tax Shelter was most famous, but very risky. It relied on start up companies engaged in R&D of new products that advanced technology or were highly experimental…. or no name companies and thus very risky.

        Apple’s Lisa Project was perfect for Xerox’s needs. Where they were handing out so much cash investments in Beefalo like Shelters only in Technology.

        Since Apple was only on the verge of putting out a Public IPO, Apple’s Steve Jobs offered Xerox a secret pre-IPO share investment specifically targeting ‘Lisa Project’ to qualify under Beefalo like Tax Shelters (these Gravy Boat Loaded w/benefits… Shelters got killed under Reagan steaming mad after he’d just signed new Tax laws into effect lowering the Corporate Tax Rate from 70% to 35%!).

        Apple got $1 Million in Xerox CASH to begin work on Lisa Commercial/Enterprise Grade Computers and Xerox got an immediate write off that year for 5x that of $5 Million Dollars. With lowered amounts of writeoffs for the 5 yr life of their Tax Shelter Write Offs.

        The crazy thing about this 5 yr thing was that if the Project (not Apple) bellied up within 5 yrs…. they once again got greater one time write offs. Apple Lisa launch failed on arrival as too expensive. Since Xerox still held those shares they were able to take that final Multi million write off…. plus sell off their shares of Apple. Which sunk in value immediately after Lisa launched to terrible reviews and few sales to speak of. Xerox made out like Bandits! lol…. and it took the Mac launch to change their failed fortunes with both Lisa and the dismal launch failure of Apple III computers!!! :D BTW… I used to sell Tax Shelters and Living Trusts back then and I made a killing off selling Beefalo Tax Shelters. Everybody needed write offs for those outrageous 70% Corporate Tax Rates!!!

  5. Rich Davis (@RichDavis9) - 9 years ago

    the Chinese smartphone maker probably was looking at Apple’s prototypes that were leaked out long before Apple released the iPhone 6 products.

  6. Kania-info - 9 years ago

    Les négociations emploi semblent mal engagées entre patronat et syndicats qu’en pensez-vous ?

  7. What goes around comes around I guess… The round corner argument all over again.

  8. Dave Huntley - 9 years ago

    China – if it wants to be serious in the world and not just a cheap fabricator – has to get off ots duff and make serious patent law and enforce it.
    This stuff may make cash for a handful but does zero for China’s image. What’s more third world than this?

  9. Buzzy T Jordan - 9 years ago

    Bullshit. China are always copying somebody’s design and claiming it theirs.

  10. So Apple makes an iPhone just like the latest iPod touch and this company claims Apple stole the iPhone 6 design from them?? Sure. Makes sense to me.

  11. bdkennedy11 - 9 years ago

    If Digione wants to start a pissing match, their phone looks more like the iPhone 3G.

  12. David Marte - 9 years ago

    If Digione wants to start a pissing match, their phone looks more like the iPod touch 1G in a slim version.

  13. iSRS - 9 years ago

    Or you know, the iPod to 5th generation (2012) and ipad mini (2012)

  14. Mike Wilson - 9 years ago

    OK so Apple say we are going to make a thinner thicker iPhone….you don’t need to be a genius to figure out what the design is going to look like.

  15. rahhbriley - 9 years ago

    Well they saw how Samsung got away with it. Fuckin trolls.

  16. Robert - 9 years ago

    It’s smart ( dumb ) to copy Apple product while they are still in production and register a patent before they are out. And don’t ask how did they now how the product looked like, as every creature on the planet had a mucked dummy of it

  17. Pila Adur - 9 years ago

    The only way Apple can stop the Chinese from ripping off their products is to bring iPhone and iPad manufacturing back to the United States using 3D printing and other robotic technologies. This would stop the Chinese counterfitters (not to mention product prototype and other product development leaks) dead in their tracks.

    • myhyazid - 9 years ago

      Yes agree with you… Since now the 3D printing materials is average cheap they can make more using it..

  18. jamal (@overthehood) - 9 years ago

    When someone copies apple, everyone slams them so hard but when apple is accused of copying someone else, they’re supported and the other party is blasted, Hypocrites much

    • iSRS - 9 years ago

      Don’t see the hypocrisy. The iPod touch and iPad mini, with these design cues, was released in fall 2012. Not a big jump to make that a phone, knowing Apple is going there with the iPhone. So, sure, make a phone that is in iPhone 5s colors, looks like the iPad mini/iPod touch, and patent it. Then when Apple gets to where it is going, sue them for making a phone that looks just like their other products that influenced your design. Sounds exactly like what Samsung did.

  19. Mike Knopp (@mknopp) - 9 years ago

    What about this design was supposed to have been copied by Apple?

    I am looking at pictures of the iPhone 6 and this side by.

    They both have the same overall rounded rectangle shape that every smartphone has. Which some could argue was popularized by Apple with the iPhone. So, if Apple copied that then everybody copied that.

    Looking at the bottom bezel. Digione appears to have the standard capacitive under glass buttons like most Android phones. The iPhone, of course, has the physical home button with the TouchID ring.

    Side bezels are side bezels.

    The top bezel has a centered long thin speaker port that is common between the two. That is about the end of the similarities. The iPhone has the front facing camera to the left of the speaker port while the Digione has theirs to the right. The Digione appears to have its light sensor in a tablet shaped opening to the left of the speaker, while the iPhone 6 has a small round opening above the speaker.

    The glass of the screen is very different. As has been widely talked about the glass on the iPhone curves around the edges and meets with the metal back on the edge of the phone. The Digione has what appears to be a plastic edging around the glass that then connects with the metal back. To me, this is the most glaring difference between the iPhone 6 and the Digione.

    Moving on, the back of the Digione appears to be a curved metal case in the pictures above. However, when you go to their site and view the photos it is pretty clear that it is a plastic back. The back on the iPhone is a curved metal with intersecting antenna bands. Curved metal backs have been a part of the iPhone and iPod Touches for years, so I don’t see how this could have been copied by Apple. The most distinctive feature, love or hate, of the iPhone 6 is the antenna bands. Something that is completely missing from the Digione. To me the back of the Digione reminds me more of the iPhone 5c.

    The rear cameras, other than both being round are not similar at all. The camera on the iPhone 6, again famously, protrudes from the rear of the case. The Digione is flush until the edge starts to curve and it remains flat, which does raise it just a bit above the curve. The mic and True Tone dual LED flash on the iPhone 6 are offset to the right of the camera lens, with the True Tone flash being slightly recessed with a chamfered edge. The mic and flash on the Digione are offest to the bottom of the camera and appear to be flush.

    The speakers on the Digione are on the bottom right corner, when viewed from the back, of the back. The speaker on the iPhone 6 is on the bottom edge right edge, when viewed from the front.

    The Digione has the headphone jack on the top. While the iPhone 6’s headphone jack is on the bottom.

    Looking at the right edge. The Digione appears to have a single piece volume rocker about two-thirds of the way up, and what I am guessing is the power button below it. The iPhone 6 has the power button about three-quarters of the way up and the SIM tray below that. So, the only similarities here is that the power button is on the same edge, but not in the same location on the edge.

    Moving on to tthe left edge. The only thing on the left edge of the Digione is the SIM tray. The iPhone 6 has a split raised volume rocker about three-fourths of the way up and the silence/rotation lock switch above that. So no similarity whatsoever.

    The bottom edge of the Digione has a USB charging port centered on it and what appears to be a mic port to the far right. The iPhone 6 has the Lighting port centered on it, but the mic port is to the left between the Lightning port and the headphone jack. To the right of the Lightning port is the speaker port.

    Given all of this, I am at a loss as to what it was that Apple supposedly copied here. Are they supposed to have copied the rounded shape of the back? Because that is a design that Apple has used on several previous devices. Are they supposed to have copied the position and shape of the phone’s ear speaker? That is pretty much the same on several phones and again has been about the same on numerous previous iPhones. Are they supposed to have copied moving the power button to the right side of the phone? This is about the only thing that I can see that wasn’t standard on numerous prior Apple products that is similar between the two. However, even that is tenuous when you consider that the power button, if that is what it is, on the Digione is about at the center of the phone while the iPhone 6 places theirs much closer to the top. Other than that, there is almost nothing similar between these two phones. Not the shape of the display glass, not the material of the back, not the design of the back, not the shape of the volume rocker, not the location of the speaker, not the location of the headphone jack, not the location of the front facing camera, not the location or shape of the light sensor, not the location of the SIM tray, not the location of the rear flash or mic, and not the bottom bezel.

    This is a BS case and in no way similar to the case that Apple brought against Samsung where there were multiple pages of things that were similar between the phones. It was much, much more than just a rounded rectangle.

  20. b9bot - 9 years ago

    The only thing close is the shape. But then all Chinese phones look like this as they copy Apple’s. They won’t win this.

  21. Joshua Stillman - 9 years ago

    Is it just me or does every new apple device look almost the same? Why are these people trying to cause drama?

  22. Every Smartphone is a copy of the iPhone. This is ridiculous.

  23. tigerpork - 9 years ago

    Did anyone else read Digione as Digimon

  24. thatsdb - 9 years ago

    Can we just pull out of building anything in China. These people do nothing but steal, and copy and duplicate and then try this “we did it first crap.”

  25. Isn’t the iPhone 6 design based off the 5th gen iPod Touch design released in 2012? Yeah nice try.

  26. vnabc56 - 9 years ago

    China is the 1st in the world in Violating Patent.We can see anywhere ,anything around the world the Copy,fraud Products made in ChiNa.
    So the C/O MADE IN CHINA means : THIEF

Author

Avatar for Jordan Kahn Jordan Kahn

Jordan writes about all things Apple as Senior Editor of 9to5Mac, & contributes to 9to5Google, 9to5Toys, & Electrek.co. He also co-authors 9to5Mac’s Logic Pros series.