It's been a while since phone manufacturers had anything truly new to offer to customers – other than a succession of useful, but decidedly unexciting, and therefore difficult to market hardware iterations.
But this doesn't mean that hardware makers are satisfied to just “fold” and settle into the role of maintaining and improving on what's for a while looked like the apex overall design for the smartphone form-factor, across various manufacturers and operating systems.
The refusal to admit that there's not much more to do than introduce incremental improvements like better battery life is how the world wound up with “foldable phones” and such – like Samsung's Galaxy Fold.
But if you thought that was pretty bad in and of itself, think again, because the phone market, while it may not have much space to grow, is apparently big enough these days to accommodate not only behemoth manufacturers' gimmicks – but also their blatant copycats.
“Escobar Fold 2 is literally Galaxy Fold with new stickers,” writes Android Authority.
But such is the drive to promise something significantly new, or at least mildly exciting in today's phone market, that the same company – or scammer, as the case may be – apparently already pulled a similar trick in the past. Escobar Inc. last December jumped on the “foldable” bandwagon by offering something called “Escobar Fold” that is yet to ship.
Escobar Fold 2, meanwhile, is here, with stickers covering Samsung's branding, “endorsements” by D-list influencers, and shipping only to “tech journalists” – and only “prominent” ones, at that.
“So, a scam, basically,” the article sums up the situation.
The report draws on the findings of YouTuber Marques Brownlee, aka MKBHD, who was the first to remove stickers and reveal the Samsung logo – and the apparent truth behind the folding phone.
To be fair, even before this discovery, it was clear from the phone's design and user interface that it was “based” on the Korean giant's attempt to “innovate” by introducing a foldable device.
There's only one question left to answer here: what is Escobar Inc. saying to all this, and in its defense?
Nothing at all, as it turns out. The company and its website have gone dark, as Brownlee points out on Twitter.
Looks like Escobar Inc recently privated and deleted all of their celebrity endorsement videos on YouTube. Not suspicious at all ? pic.twitter.com/WP5OVc5rPe
— Marques Brownlee (@MKBHD) March 12, 2020
Attempted to visit the Escobar Inc website to see if they were still scamming people… Got this error. We did it? pic.twitter.com/IIPPp35yZY
— Marques Brownlee (@MKBHD) March 12, 2020
