Android fanboys ridiculed Apple when it launched those gold iPhones. They were all like ‘Yeah, we get it, you are costly. Enough with the bling already!’ And then, within months, we saw Samsung and other Android phone manufacturers splashing a liberal dose of gold on their handsets. Talk about taking a 180-degree turn!
Fast forward one year. Apple introduced the Rose Gold colour, and Android lovers were like ‘Now, this is too much’. And then … you guessed it! Welcome Rose Gold Android phones!Given the media buzz that followed Apple debuting the color on its iPhone 6S and 6S Plus models, it was evident that the rose gold was a smash hit. It was now only a matter of time before Android phones started appearing in their shiny pink avatar as well.
Chinese maker Oppo has claimed the honour of introducing the first Rose Gold Android phone in the market. And though Samsung says its Note 3 was Rose Gold, we think they are stretching the colour gamut a bit too much. At best it was bronze-pink.
Oppo R7S has a fully rose gold back, which seems to be quite a hit among its Chinese audience. Even Apple CEO Tim Cook had said that the color was designed especially for the Chinese market.
The ‘inspiration from Apple’ doesn’t stop at the colour. Oppo’s custom Android (Color OS 2.1) does not have the stock Android’s app drawer. Instead, it has Apple like home-screen filled with all the apps.
Even the Camera app is similar. Just like in iOS, you swipe left and right to switch modes. The placement of buttons and icons on the border are also very similar to iOS. In selfie mode, you use a front-facing flash, a.k.a. Retina Flash.
Oppo is just one example. A lot of bigger names in the industry have also been found guilty of straight-up lifting design elements from iPhones. For example, when HTC launched its One A9 this past September, it was largely touted as the most high-profile iPhone rip-off since Samsung’s Galaxy S. The Verge went so far as to call it ‘a blasphemous concoction of Apple design and Google software’.
Don’t get us wrong. We aren’t saying that Oppo R7S or HTC One A9 aren’t good phones. They are solid devices and, in fact, very appealing at their price points. But isn’t creating one-to-one replicas of popular products a cheap shot? Or is it just the way market works? We’ll let you be the judge of that.