By A year ago, we told you that the CEO of Meizu addressed fanboys about their pursuit of Android. Then, a few months ago we told you that the company known for iPhone lookalikes was poised to launch the Meizu M9 with Android 2.1. Today we get more details.
In a post on the company’s forum, CEO Jack Wong said he plans to launch the Meizu M9 in October with Android 2.2, a 960×640 pixel screen, an updated Wi-Fi module, and completely customized Android UI. Take a look at a few screenshots:
In April we were also teased with the idea that the Meizu M9 would have three variations of keyboards. I guess that’s up for debate as the few details and screenshots above are all we get for now.
October would be a nice timeframe, but as widely reported, expect delays and limited availability outside of China… at least initially.
[Via Engadget, MeizuMe, Electronista, MeizuMi]
960×640 sound incredibly tempting for me to ditch my vibrant.
The screenshots are enough to grab my attention. That UI is absolutely brilliant. Beats the hell out of Sense.
Not sure about the 1300MB mp3 file though.
this looks really good. also i like that gallery, its much better than that annoying 3D gallery from 2.1
Can’t wait for a rom dump of this would make for a great custom theme.
Custom UI? Why do they always ruin the phones this way?
I bought a meizu iphone lookalike for use in china…
it was miserable
avoiding meizu like the plague
Engrish prease.
Im not terribly excited about that UI (or any for that matter) but the screen resolution is impressive, if it really is that resolution which it may very well be a fake its nice. But why havent HTC/Motorola jumped on an increase in resolution yet? Ever since the iphone added a high resolution im surprised that no other android manufacturer has been able to create a screen that competes or exceeds. Hopefully this will push those other companies into uping the resolution.
good to see this site don’t called it an iphone4 clone, because it has 960×640 resolution.
What is Meizu?
@Ryan
it actually takes a long time to make a phone. It’s not like MOTO or HTC could just make a phone with a super high-res display in a month or two, it’s just not going to happen.
While Apple was upgrading their screen, HTC and Motorola were giving bigger screens, adding DLNA support, HDMI ports, and other hardware upgrades where the LiePhone can’t compete with. I wouldn’t expect too many retina-like displays out until next year when it comes to Android devices. I’d love to be wrong, but I’m guessing that unless the manufacturers already had plans to make a phone with such a display this year, it won’t be happening soon
the UI looks brilliant, im keeping my eye on this
@Blake
Perhaps, I was just surprised that after the release of the iPhone 4, that not all phone got an upgrade in resolution. Pergaps I am just anxious but I would have expected for HTC and moto to go head to head with the iPhones screen one the prototype specs were released by gizmodo. Its also possible that they are already working on better screen resolutions, but I would have expected to have heard something in a futures phone by now. Oh well.
@ryan
To put it into realistic terms, iPhone users have been happy with 480×320 resolution for a long time. The jump to 960×640 doesn’t necessarily help you do more, especially on a sub-4″ screen. Quite frankly the difference between 854×480 and 960×640 is pretty minimal, and nothing like the difference between 480×320 and 854×480. There’s simply no urgent need for higher resolution like there was on previous iphones.
That being said, I will gladly take a higher resolution screen, especially for remoting into servers using WYSE. A 5″ screen at 1280×720 or similar would be great for that! I’m sure some android manufacturer will come out with something to best the iPhone in the resolution department next year, but I wouldn’t necessarily expect it to become commonplace on most android phones.
It’s not that manufacturers have just dropped the ball on coming out with higher resolution displays, I believe it’s a limitation of Android. Please don’t flame me if I’m wrong, but I think I read somewhere that Gingerbread is supposed to add support for higher resolution displays. So you might get your wish for “retina displays” when Gingerbread drops.
carlos, how would this android phone be able to have it?
it’s great that the display supports that resolution, however what cpu/gpu does it come with? the resolution is pointless unless it has the hardware to take advantage of it.
That is a really nice and clean UI.
that ui is redolent of old win mobile. this is far from knocking my socks off.
In my opinion Meizu stand a chance to succeed as they try to manufacture cool phones for a very good price, but as already said in a preceding comment: They have to prove it now that they are able to join the game of the top dogs.
Am I the only one that thinks it’s weird that the included screengrabs are 500×750 pixels?
And btw: 2.2 does not support more then 480×854 as Carlos points out..
I really like the look of media player – It’s about time someone built a functional and user friendly media player that also looks good.
The iPhone 4 has 614400 pixels, Nexus One (800 * 480) 384000 and Droid (854 * 480) 409920. Changing to iPhone 4 resolution would only add about a third more pixels but require changing manufacturing lines. It is simply more efficient to wait for Gingerbread and make a bigger step then.
960 * 640 made sense for Apple because it was just a bit more than what the competition had to offer (to give their drones a sense of superiority) and has four times the pixels compared to what they had before.
Just compare the numbers: iPhone 3 to iPhone 4: 300%; Nexus One to iPhone 4: 37,5%.
The reason that Apple chose a 960×480 display is simply that it is exactly 4x the resolution of their old display (2×480 and 2×240). This allows for extremely simple upscaling of old application and icons without having to deal with fractional upscaling artefacts.
Its not rocket science, people
You are Crazy Joe! But absolutely right..
That sort of res is just not that necessary for a phone, unless you have a magnifying glass.. Its nice, granted, but certainly not a killer feature,, watching a film on a 3.5′ screen is not enhanced by the extra pixels..
Put that res on a 4 incher, we start to enjoy the benifits
I had a Meizu mp3 player, the quality was very good so if the craftsmanship is as good on this and it’s priced cheap enough it might make a good alternative to other unlocked budget phones.
I would be worried about support and development by the manufacturer and because it will not be super popular the community development will probably be minor also.
I hope that he will be out this year, it was too wants to touch device
I like Meizu, compare by the price, it’s look nice, cheap and very good display and very good music sound
@17
Its gonna have a 1Ghz Samsung processor with 512mb of Ram. Plus it will include an HDMI output, which means it would have the hardware to back up its resolution, as it would need it to decode HD.
From what I’m reading the price with be around $350 USD, the amount of features and an Android system is enough to keep me interested. Hopefully a community will develop for this phone, and we can have roms galore.
Eh the Chinese writing on there is wrong, it’s missing a lot of strokes in many characters. Maybe the meizu people don’t know correct Chinese? But the HTC people write correctly, what’s wrong with the meizu peeps?!
@29 Its called simplified Chinese, which China has been slowly adapting. HTC, a Taiwanese company, like the rest of Taiwan uses Traditional Chinese
Meizu is a brand of cell phone which locates in China and it has a very lots fans.
just like Apple,it used to produce MP3 and from 2008,it has focus on cell phone.
the first version is M8,which is really fantastic.
i once had a one, it screen is so great,and the UI too!
now ,they are going to release the new preduction–M9,which is installed android 2.2.
but the CEO saiy they will not use the initial
android 2.2.
they will do lots of changes so they can get money from their own online stores.
by the way, i am using HTC desire Z now.
great..
contact me to :[email protected]
Meizu is a shame on China’s electronic/mobile device manufacturers!
Android 2.2 runs just fine on higher resolutions, you guys that say otherwise are full of crap. Several Android tablets run on 1024×600 resolution, and the only noticeable issue is that the UI gets stretched a bit in places, but otherwise works perfectly fine.
The reason 800×480 and 854×480 became the standard resolutions for Android devices is because those were the only available screens at the time the HTC Nexus One and the Motorola Droid were being developed, which was about a year before the iPhone 4 was being finalized. While there are dozens of Android phones available, in total there are only a few manufacturers that handle the production of the screens, which is why you only see a few major varieties of screens; OLED at 800×480, LCD at 800×480, and LCD at 854×480. Apple just happened to be the first company to sign a large contract with the manufacturer responsible for the new 960×640 displays, so that’s why they had them first in the iPhone 4.
The real problem with using a 960×640 screen on an Android device is not that the operating system won’t support it, but that certain non-scalable UI elements, like buttons and icons, will appear much smaller than normal, because they were drawn for a 800×480 screen. So rather than wait for Google to redesign the UI elements to appear the right size on the higher resolution screen, Meizu took matters into their own hands and redesigned the UI themselves.
According to reports on Chinese forums, Meizu M9 actually released in late December. It seems that the Chinese have really done a good job on this device. M9 now no longer looks like the iPhone, at least not more than the Samsung Galaxy
I heard people only can pre-order it now, because the Meizu meet supply problem,the internet buyers just can buy from some retailers.So the price must a little expensive. My friend suggest me to order one from Dealextreme,but it seems more expensive than the other:
http://www.lightake.com/detail.do/sku.Pre_Order_Meizu_M9_3.5__Touch_Screen_1GHz_S5PC110_Android_2.2_GSM_WCDMA_Cell_Phone_w_WiFi_GPS-35218
r4i
r4i
SD Cards
SDHC Cards
I like Meizu, compare by the price, it’s look nice, cheap and very good display and very good music sound