Exclusive: Hero H2000+ iPhone 5 Clone First Impressions

This past holiday weekend Hero were nice enough to send us one of their all new Hero H2000+ iPhone 5 clones for us to review. Take a look at our initial impressions, photos and benchmarks after the jump.

iPhone 5 clones are already flooding the market here in China despite the fact that the genuine iPhone 5 has yet to officially set foot on the mainland. However thanks to the various leaks and photos which hit the media on the countdown to the iPhone 5's launch last month, Chinese phone manufacturers have had a bit of a head start with making their knock-offs.

The Hero H2000+ represents one of the first iPhone 5 clones to be available on the market and also happens to be one of the cheapest too!

For those of you who are familiar with either Hero or Zopo you will have noticed that this iPhone 5 clone is a H2000+, the '+' in the name standing for an updated dual-core processor. The Hero H2000+ iPhone 5 clone has a dual-core CPU from Taiwan manufacturer MeidaTek in the shape of the very popular MT6577.

A 4 inch screen with a resolution of 854 x 480 allows you to control your iPhone 5 clone, and in our test proved to have a good viewing angle and was better than some phones when used in direct sunlight.

The H2000+ also comes equipped with 512MB RAM, 4GB ROM, Android 4.0 OS, dual-sim support, SD card slot, 8 mega-pixel rear camera with LED Flash, front camera, Bluetooth, GPS and a 1580 mAH battery.

There are going to be at least 2 items in that specification which some of you now are going to is a bit of a let down. The battery size being one and the amount of RAM the other. Well for the RAM this iPhone 5 clone actually performs very well as you will see below, and the battery couldn't be any bigger due to the thickness of the phone.

As you would expect from an iPhone 5 clone the Hero H2000+ is a 1:1 replica of the latest 4 inch screened iPhone from Apple, but due to the differences in price the real iPhone and this clone have a few differences.

The body on the Hero H2000+ iPhone 5 clone is made of plastic for a start and even with the battery in seems to weigh absolutely nothing!

The front of the phone has a single physical home button just as the real iPhone 5 has, with the other Android options such as back, option and latest apps having their own on-screen buttons.

There is also a front facing camera on the H2000+ but it sits to the right of the speaker, with various light and proximity sensors located on the left.

Along the edges of the Hero are alloy look silver plastic. The bottom offers similar looking speaker grills and a micro USB connector in the place of the iPhone 5's lightning connector.

A power button and the 3.5mm headphone jack are placed at the top of this iPhone 5 clone (more like the iPhone 4S) and we have volume controls on the left edge of the phone. Be warned though that the mute 'switch' is in fact a button made to look like the iPhone 5's control.

The back of this which Hero H2000+ iPhone 5 clone gets the same white and silver two-tone design as the real iPhone 5 and there are even real Apple logos and iPhone branding on this replica!

Being an Android phone this iPhone 5 clone has one major difference when compared to the real iPhone 5 in the design department it that the rear of the phone is removable to uncover the battery, dual-sim slots and the micro-SD card slot. The rear of the Hero H200+ actually includes the edges and the buttons too so you have to be careful when removing so you don't loose the metal inserts for these controls.

Like most dual-sim Chinese phones, the Hero H2000+ allows support for 1 WCDMA sim and one GSM (or two GSM sims) and according to the specification on the box support GSM 850/900/1800/1900 or WCDMA 2100/800.

Performance is surprisingly good I expected a little lag from screen to screen like the Zopo ZP500+ Libero which has a similar specification, but the Hero H2000+ actually performs surprisingly well and even managed a very impressive 5326 on AnTuTu!

As mentioned above the 4 inch screen with its 854 x 480 resolution actually offers a very good viewing angle and can even be seen (better than most) in direct sunlight.

The rear 8 mega-pixel camera captures pretty good photos for a phone which costs less than $200, but like most of these lower price phone's don't expect amazing low light or night-time photos. Actually speaking of nigh time photos, the Hero H2000+ has an extremely poor rear flash which looks like it was added for show rather than function.

As you get an Android 4.0 ICS OS you get all the great range of manual camera functions plus some nice options including face and smile recognition along with a bunch of built-in filters.

While having a brief play around outside on a cloudless day this weekend I had ago at besting the GPS, as I know this is a feature many of you would like to use. Well I can report after 5 minutes of trying to connect I gave up! The GPS on the H2000+ just didn't want to lock on!

So what do I think of the Hero H2000+ iPhone 5 clone? Well it all depends on your expectations for a sub $200 Android phone. If you want a lightweight, stylish phone with better than average performance, has a better than average rear camera (if used only in the day) then the Hero H2000+ iPhone 5 clone would be a good choice.

However if you want a more functional phone, with better build quality and act as an all round better phone I would suggest you look at a different phone such as the Zopo ZP500+ Libero, JiaYu G3 or similar.

If you want to get your hands on one of these iPhone 5 clones by Hero you can order the Hero H2000+ from the Hero mobile shop here.