I don’t think that’s necessarily so. It’s a custom chip, a custom enclosure, and custom software. None of this, in China, presents that much of a problem.
China has had 20 years to tool up every factory they have to churn out customized chips, circuitry, and smart phones of all shapes and sizes. Someone, somewhere has the institutional knowledge and excess capacity. A small group, with access, could be using the equipment off-hours(?) And all they’re doing is slightly modifying an existing prototype and shoving their own hardware on top. The plastic that hides the infrared light has been standard on TV remotes for decades.
It would have been the cherry on top of this expose sundae if the writer had dug further and said something like “This is a Galaxy X5-7 from 2014 and they’ve just replaced the wifi module with their hacked card reader.” Someone must recognize the phone’s form factor and the home screen layout(?)
Inspecting the few screenshots of the device available on resellers websites, allowed me to figure out who was the manufacturer of the device [a factory located in China.]
I decided to take my chances and contact them directly.
Both these steps to me seem almost as daunting as the technological creation of the device itself.
Wouldn’t the Chinese factory try to hide the origin of the product? Wouldn’t it be reluctant to sell to a different party other than its sponsor? Which makes me think that the factory is possibly completely out of the loop: they’re just building a product on spec. “Oh, you also will pay $1300 for this? Here you go…”
On the other other hand, the software does come with the gadget, that almost surely was developed and tested in China. Damn, I would love to know the full story on this.
