China’s extremely lax intellectual property laws allow knockoffs of just about everything to be produced and sold there, and evidently, the Galaxy S III is no exception. A company called HDC (not a typo) is making an imitation S III, and selling it for the equivalent of about $200. How does it stack up to the real thing? GizmoChina got their hands on one and took it for a spin.

The verdict: it isn’t so bad. The specs are nowhere near those of the real Samsung device, with a single-core 1GHz processor, a 5 megapixel camera, and no LTE support. It’s also stuck on an imitation-TouchWiz version of Android 2.3, and will probably remain stuck there forever. On the bright side, the thing actually works reasonably well, and won’t disintegrate in your hands. It has working 3G, and the connects to the Play Store just fine. Not bad for less than a third of the cost of the real thing. The full specs are:

  • 4.7 inch capacitive touchscreen
  • Android 2.3 Gingerbread, with Google Play
  • WiFi, GPS, TV
  • Support for 3G networks: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 & WCDMA 850/2100 MHz
  • 5MP back camera + 0.3MP front camera
  • Dual SIM card support

Let us know what you think of this knockoff in the comments.