Fake iEDGE Cards Background on the iEDGE Card

Several years ago, the original EDGE DS card took the Nintendo DS card world by storm. The market was flooded with many of the original cards including the R4 DS (the original R4v2 card), the R4 SDHC, the DSTT, and the M3DS card. Every card had its pros and cons - the M3 was by far the most robust card, but the R4DS and DSTTi were incredibly cheap. The R4 SDHC was the first card to reliably accept 8GB Micro-SDHC cards and above.
The EDGE DS, however, completely changed the scene. First of all, it came with a very distinctive triangular packaging that has become a trademark of the EDGE team. This made it particularly popular as a gift. More importantly, though, was what was inside - the EDGE DS card was incredibly robust, rivalling even the early M3DS card. The software was simple and easy to use like the R4DS and other R4 series of cards, but looked sleeker and used darker colours to give a more professional and polished feel to the firmware.
Around the same time, many of the R4 series of cards had clones of them coming out - the R4v3 (which eventually became reasonably popular but was still a clone/fake), R4 Ultra, R4 Advance, R6, and a few others. This made the R4 brand in general less popular and more distrusted. The EDGE DS arrived at the perfect time to take advantage of this, and for all the reasons above it literally exploded onto the market as the closest thing to a "perfect DS card" that can be made.
The iEDGE is the sucessor to the EDGE DS, and was released a significant time after the Nintendo DSi came out. This is because the EDGE team wanted to make sure the iEDGE was perfect and had the same effect as the original EDGE DS had on the Nintendo DS and Nintendo DS Lite. They certainly seem to have accomplished that! The "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" approach has worked wonders for them. The iEDGE's packaging is the same as the old EDGE DS, with a beautiful triangular design making it look great as a gift. It is as robust as the sturdiest of the Nintendo DSi compatible cards on the market, and the software is once again 100% perfect - looks polished, and very easy to use even for beginners and first-time users of DS and DSi cards.

The First Fake iEDGE

One of the great things about the original EDGE DS was that there were no fake cards on the market. Unlike the very popular R4 brand, which had tens of 'clones' available for consumers to buy, it seemed that the EDGE DS was special enough that rival factories did not bother produce it. This could also be because many foreign markets appreciated the benefits of the EDGE DS while the R4 was the local favourite in Asia.
Unfortunately, this trend has ceased to exist, as there is a fake iEDGE DS card on the market as of early February, 2010. We are currently trying to get more stores on our "Where to Buy" list once we verify more shops that sell genuine cards.

Difference between Official iEDGE Website and Fake iEDGE Website

Please beware of the difference in domain names to tell where your card is from. Accompanying screenshots from GamingBase:
The REAL / OFFICIAL iEDGE WEBSITE (shown below) will always be http://www.edge-ds.cn

The FAKE / CLONE iEDGE WEBSITE (shown below) is http://www.edgei-ds.cn

Starting Icons / Sudoku vs Danny Phantom

Another way to determine whether or not your iEDGE is genuine after flashing - when booting up the iEDGE DS in your console: the REAL iEDGE will show "Sudoku" while the FAKE iEDGE will show "Danny Phantom". This is the icon you see when you first boot up your DSi console and come to the menu, or when you boot up your DS console and get to the main screen.
An example of the FAKE iEDGE LOADING ICON is shown below, and displays "Danny Phantom"

Difference in Error Messages on Fake iEDGE Cards

There is another useful way to check for whether your iEDGE is genuine or a clone / fake. The clone / fake iEDGE uses a copy of the DSTT firmware with different graphics being displayed, so it also shares the error messages with the DSTT system. If you see the below "System File is Missing" error when you intentionally put incorrect software on your iEDGE, you know that you unfortunately have a fake.

The "System File is Missing" error message on FAKE / Clone iEDGE Cards

If you see the above error message, you have a fake iEDGE card. The real iEDGE card uses different software with a different set of error messages.

Differences between the Genuine / Fake iEDGE Cards Packaging

There are also a few ways to tell a real from a fake iEDGE card by looking at the packaging. Be warned, however, that many websites selling the fake put up photos of the original, so it's still quite hard to tell before you buy! You can see our separate article on the fake and real iEDGE packaging appearance here.

Buying Genuine / Real iEDGE Cards

It's difficult in many cases to tell whether an iEDGE card is real until you buy it. For this reason, we have a list of websites where you can purchase a real iEDGE card (we have actually made a purchase on every site to confirm this - so rest assured we check! :-). If you are in doubt as to where your card comes from, always e-mail the vendor first to ask what the official website of the card is. Help protect against fakes!
If you know of other websites we may be able to add to the list, please contact us straight away so we can send an e-mail to other sites to talk to them about adding them to the list on this site. We're also particularly looking for Canadian and Australian suppliers at the moment - so please contact us if you run a website or know of one that could be here!
Armed with this information, you should be able to buy a real iEDGE with no problems. Best wishes!