A man who ordered an iPhone 15 Pro got a nasty surprise in the mail instead: a fairly convincing Android-based copy of the iPhone.
Ed from Surrey, England, who goes by the Reddit handle theEdmard, claims he’d ordered the iPhone directly from Apple’s website, with legitimate tracking all the way, and confirmation emails from both Apple and DPD.
The packaging is quite close to the genuine one.
Credit: Ed
But once the package arrived, something was off. Indeed, the phone looked like the one Ed had ordered — an iPhone 15 Pro in Natural Titanium with 256GB of RAM — and the packaging appeared genuine. But on closer inspection, it became obvious that the device was actually an Android phone running a software skin that mimics Apple’s iOS user interface.
The user interface is similar to Apple’s iOS. Subtle details, like the text alignment on the Calendar app, give it away.
Credit: Ed
Numerous details gave the scam away: the phone had a screen protector (Apple’s iPhones never come with a protector), its display had a noticeable “chin” on the bottom (Apple’s recent iPhones have uniform bezels all around), and several apps, including Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok, came preinstalled on the phone, which, again, is something that Apple never does.
Ed, who is the COO for cloud software provider AtWrk, says he contacted Apple to see what’s up, but hasn’t yet heard back from them.
We reached out to Ed, who told us he’s certain that he ordered directly from Apple, as his order number matches up with what Apple has in their database. He let us review the order confirmation page he received in the email, which appears to be genuine. Ed also told us that Apple has been “very accommodating” so far, though the issue hasn’t been resolved yet.
Ed may not be the only person that’s the victim of this scam. A recent TikTok describes a very similar issue, with an Android fake coming in the mail instead of a legitimately ordered Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max.
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Apple ships millions of iPhones every month, and such occurrences are rare, especially when ordering directly from Apple. But this particular scam is dangerous, as the Android copy of the iPhone is a fairly convincing, functional device, which prompts the user to log in with their iCloud credentials, potentially leading to data theft.
We’ve reached out to Apple UK regarding this issue and will update this article when we hear back.
