It’s no surprise that Chinese manufacturers have scrambled to produce a counterfeit version of Samsung’s Galaxy S3 less than two months after the phone’s release. In fact, it was only a matter of time.

The highly coveted device - the real deal, that is - has racked up sales in the millions, but for those with a smaller budget, the HDC Galaxy S3 is likely to fool all your friends.

At first glance, the HDC version is virtually indistinguishable from the Samsung handset, though a closer look reveals that it’s quite a bit thicker.

The S3 fake falls flat spec-wise, as well. It sports a 4.7in TFT display with a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels, a 5-megapixel rear camera, and a 0.3-megapixel front-facing camera. The HDC S3 runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread on a 1GHz processor with 512MB of RAM, and weighs in at 160g.

The real Galaxy S3, on the other hand, ships with a 4.8in, 1,280 x 720 pixel display and an 8-megapixel camera that’s been lauded for its quality. The device also has a secondary 1.9-megapixel front-facing camera. It’s got Android 4.0 ICS and is powered by a quad-core 1.4GHz CPU with 1GB of RAM. It’s a fair bit lighter at 133g.

The HDC Galaxy S3 is clearly an inferior device, but its upper hand is in its pricing - just $209 (£134) to purchase the phone sim-free. You can read our review of the Samsung Galaxy S3.

Image Credit: Phones Review