Meizu has had an fascinating historical past and after a number of turbulent years it pulled out of the smartphone market. Now that it’s below the wing of car-maker Geely, the corporate is poised to make its return with the launch of the Meizu 20 sequence on March 30. As that’s nonetheless a few weeks out, let’s take a look again at Meizu’s most fascinating telephones whereas we wait.
The corporate was based in 2003 and initially made MP3 gamers. Its first telephone was unveiled in January 2007. It was dubbed the Meizu M8 and it ran “Mymobile” software program based mostly on Home windows CE 6.0. Nonetheless, getting the telephone to market proved to be an enormous difficulty. Meizu introduced the M8 to CeBIT in March 2008, over a yr after first asserting it, and it was nonetheless in a prototype stage with barely working software program. However that was solely the start of the M8’s woes.
In accordance with Apple’s legal professionals, it bore greater than a passing resemblance to the iPhone. After an emergency redesign the telephone additionally modified its identify to the “miniOne”. The litigation battle continued and M8 manufacturing was ultimately halted in 2010 and all gross sales had been banned.
Meizu M8: authentic design • redesign (image source)
The Meizu M9 launched in early 2011 and it was the corporate’s first Android telephone. This mannequin was powered by the Samsung Hummingbird chipset, a yr after the unique Galaxy S used it. This was solely the start of Meizu’s relationship with Samsung.
This was adopted by the Meizu MX, which was additionally the primary official outing of the closely personalized Android pores and skin often known as “Flyme OS”. The MX additionally used an Exynos chip and featured a pointy 4.0” qHD show. Meizu was nonetheless overtly borrowing from Apple’s designs as we famous in our review.
Meizu MX
Skipping over to the Meizu MX3, its declare to fame was that it was the primary smartphone with 128GB of inbuilt storage. That was quite a bit for 2013. And in case you’ll permit us a small detour, flagships 10 years later ought to have greater than 128GB base storage – there, we stated it. By the best way, this telephone used the Exynos 5410 Octa (aka the Galaxy S4 chipset). Meizu was arguably the most important Exynos shopper outdoors of Samsung itself.
Meizu MX3
The corporate opened as much as new suppliers and the Meizu MX4 from late 2014 was its first to make use of a MediaTek chipset. It had an attention grabbing 5.36” bezel-less show (on the edges, not less than), provided nice battery life and audio high quality, the 20.7MP digicam was stable too.
At this level Meizu’s key difficulty was that its telephones had been comparatively unknown outdoors of China at a time when the likes of Xiaomi and OnePlus had been increasing quickly.
Meizu MX4
2014’s Meizu M1 Note can also be worthy of consideration, this was the primary of the reasonably priced Be aware sequence. Regardless of its comparatively weak MediaTek MT6762 chipset that solely had Cortex-A53 cores, the 5.5” 1080p show used a flowery IGZO panel (although its high quality wasn’t pretty much as good as on Sharp telephones).
Meizu M1 Be aware
Okay, we’ll skip to the actually good things. The Meizu Pro 5 was an enviable flagship – its metallic unibody was glossy, as was the two.5D Gorilla Glass on the entrance that sat above the 5.7” AMOLED show (1080p).
This telephone was powered by the Exynos 7420 Octa. A number of months earlier Samsung launched its Galaxy S6 with that actual chip and solely that chip (Qualcomm was having a second in 2015). The Sony-made 16MP digicam senor on the again boasted OIS and produced spectacular photographs. We concluded our review by saying that the Meizu Professional 5 was a simple telephone to advocate, if solely individuals might truly purchase one – Meizu’s distribution community was nonetheless severely missing in comparison with its competitors.
Meizu Professional 5
Then in 2016 got here the Meizu Pro 6. It was smaller than its predecessor with a 5.2” Tremendous AMOLED show however no much less premium (metallic physique, Gorilla Glass 4, 3D Contact, you identify it). Nonetheless, the explanation we keep in mind this mannequin is completely different – it was considered one of only a few telephones that used MediaTek’s Helio X25, a uncommon chipset with a 10-core CPU.
Meizu Professional 6
The three-cluster design had two Cortex-A72 (2.5GHz), 4 A53 (2.0GHz) and 4 extra A53 (1.4GHz). This beat most Android telephones in multi-core benchmarks, although not all (notably the Galaxy S7 edge and Huawei P9 edged it out in our testing, even when solely simply). The Mali-T880 MP4 GPU underperformed as compared, nevertheless.
The Helio X20 was an earlier 10-core design (similar {hardware}, however the A72 pair ran at 2.3GHz) and some months later Meizu used it within the extra reasonably priced MX6. There was additionally the Meizu Pro 6 Plus after that, which converted to the Exynos 8890 Octa, the identical chipset because the Galaxy S7 used earlier in 2016. The Plus featured a 5.7” QHD show (additionally with 3D contact).
Meizu MX6 and Meizu Professional 6 Plus
Meizu at all times had an inclination for out of the field considering, not less than when it wasn’t making an attempt to repeat the iPhone. The Meizu Pro 7 and Pro 7 Plus launched in mid-2017 and moreover having 5.2” FHD and 5.7” QHD Tremendous AMOLED shows on the entrance, respectively, additionally they had 2” AMOLED shows on their backs (240 x 536px).
Meizu Professional 7 Plus
We’ve seen fairly just a few gaming telephones characteristic a secondary rear show since then in addition to telephones just like the Xiaomi Mi 11 Extremely. This show might work as a viewfinder when taking selfies with the primary cam, however sadly it lacked All the time On performance.
The Professional 7 excessive version and the Plus used the Helio X30, the final of the X-series and MediaTek’s final try at a 10-core CPU. The bottom Professional 7 featured a Helio P25 as a substitute (8-core CPU). The Professional 7 sequence was additionally the primary time Meizu introduced a dual-camera, although it was a coloration+monochrome combo moderately than an extremely vast or telephoto lens.
Meizu continued churning out fascinating designs over time, however the firm by no means grew as massive and as in style as a few of its compatriots. It will definitely wound down operations, releasing a brand new telephone from time to time. Earlier than we wrap up, we wished to say one fascinating prototype – the Meizu Zero.
The Meizu Zero prototype by no means noticed a business launch
Are you able to guess why it’s referred to as that? It had precisely zero buttons, speakers or charging ports. The aspect buttons had been changed by capacitive sensors, the speaker used a piezoelectric transducer, the battery was charged over a proprietary 18W wi-fi system, knowledge transfers had been completed over cell networks and Wi-Fi.
None of that was unseen beforehand, e.g. the HTC U12+ did away with the aspect buttons, Sharp and Xiaomi had had piezo audio system, wi-fi charging was fairly effectively established in 2019. Nonetheless, this was the primary telephone to mix all these in a single place whereas concurrently throwing away all transferring components.
With Apple’s grumbling about placing a USB-C port on its iPhones, many speculate that it wish to drop the wired charging port altogether. That is hardly a brand new hypothesis, we’ve been listening to some model of this rumor for years now. But when it truly does it, this can be a uncommon alternative for Meizu to say “we did it first”.
No matter occurred with the Meizu Zero? It began off nice, winning an iF Gold Award for its “non-porous” design (Google’s Pixel 4 and 4 XL additionally picked up Gold awards that yr). Nonetheless, things came crashing down simply weeks later – Meizu was utilizing a crowd-funding campaign on Indiegogo to attempt to promote the telephone and it set a modest objective of $100,000.
After two months of campaigning, the telephone had simply 29 backers, solely 24 of which truly pre-ordered the telephone on the, let’s say formidable, worth of $1,300. Somebody picked up the only “Pioneering Unit” at $3,000, although we will’t promise that stated somebody wasn’t working at Meizu on the time. Even with the tremendous low funding objective that wasn’t sufficient and the very muted curiosity led the corporate to cancel the challenge altogether.
Meizu by no means lacked ambition and when it was doing its personal factor, it produced some really distinctive designs. We’re not saying that each one of them had been good, however they had been distinctive.
We hope that the corporate retains the identical spirit and that it expands to extra markets – with Geely’s monetary backing and worldwide retail footprint, it appears to wish to do exactly that. Geely’s curiosity transcend diversifying its portfolio, Meizu is engaged on an infotainment software program dubbed FlymeAuto, which can promote vertical integration within the Geely household of merchandise.
Which is your favourite Meizu deign – one of many telephones we talked about above or one of many ones we skipped? And do you assume that the Zero idea had benefit or that it was only a gimmick?