Meizu Pro 5 delayed until November due to factory flood

The Meizu Pro 5, which was made official later last month and was scheduled to go on sale on October 12, won't be released until next month. According to the company, the delay was caused by floods that hit a manufacturing facility in the Chinese city of Guangdong.

The facility in question manufactures the unibody chassis. There was, however, no word on whether the unfortunate situation would affect the release or sales of any of the Chinese company's other devices.

If you aren't already aware, the Pro 5 is powered by a Samsung Exynos 7420 chipset, and sports a 5.7" Super AMOLED screen of 1080p resolution. It comes with 3GB/4GB RAM and 32GB/64GB memory options, and packs in a 3050mAh battery.

In terms of camera, the handset features a 21MP rear unit and a 5MP front shooter. It runs Android 5.1 Lollipop-based Flyme 5 OS.

Via

Meizu smartphones tops benchmarks with Exynos 7420 and Helio X20

Meizu officials have already said that we're not going to see an MX5 Pro smartphone, with the "Pro" line getting shelved. However, that apparently doesn't mean that there won't be some high-end devices from the Chinese company in the near future.

It may in fact be already working on not one, but two of those - one of which could be the device formerly known as the MX5 Pro Plus (and supposedly pictured below). A Meizu device with a Samsung Exynos 7420 SoC as well as another Meizu device with a MediaTek Helio X20 chipset have managed to top some benchmark charts recently.

Let's start with the Exynos-powered unit, codenamed NIUX according to the folks who run the AnTuTu benchmark. This has achieved a score of 69,000, putting it pretty much on par with the Samsung Galaxy Note5 sporting the same chipset.

There is one important difference, however, as the Meizu went through AnTuTu with 'just' a 1080p screen. The display's size is still a mystery, but other specs of the device have been revealed. It's going to have a 21 MP main camera, a 5 MP front-facing snapper, 3GB of RAM, and 32GB of storage. It currently runs Android 5.1 Lollipop.

Moving on we get to another handset, and this one is said to launch as the Meizu ME5 (to complement the MX5 in the firm's roster, undoubtedly). It uses MediaTek's upcoming Helio X20 SoC with a deca-core processor (yes, that's ten cores). Because two of those cores are Cortex-A72, it's managed to beat the aforementioned Exynos 7420 in the AnTuTu benchmark, because Samsung's offering has to make do with Cortex-A57s on the performance cluster, and the A72s outperform those.

The Helio X20 goes past 70,000 points in the benchmark, revealing perhaps the first ever true high-end contender from MediaTek. Once again, though, the Meizu device used to achieve that score has 1080p resolution, so keep that in mind.

The ME5 is rumored to come with a 5.5-inch screen, a 20 MP Sony Exmor RS rear camera with f/1.8 aperture and the 1/1.7" Sony IMX204 sensor, as well as a 6.2 MP selfie snapper with f/1.8 aperture and a 1/3.06" sensor with wide-angle lens. The phone should have 2.5D curved glass on both the front and the back, with a metal frame - a design that's said to be reminiscent of Samsung's Galaxy S6, but with less reflections put out by the glass. There will be a fingerprint sensor on the back, 4GB of RAM in tow, and a 3,600 mAh battery. It will be around 7.9mm thick, but the camera will protrude to 9.9mm.

According to sources in China, Meizu will price the ME5 at a whopping CNY 4,999, which is around $785 or €695, putting it on par with the iPhone 6 and the Galaxy S6 in that market. So this will clearly not aim to compete with any 'affordable Chinese flagships'. Meizu feels that the design and workmanship of the ME5 are worth the high asking price.

It's unclear when either of these handsets will become official. It's also quite possible that the two are going to be offered as two versions of the same ME5: a lower-end one with the Exynos 7420 and 3GB of RAM, as well as a higher-end model with the MediaTek Helio X20 and 4GB of RAM. Their other specs are similar enough for this to easily happen.

Source 1 (in Chinese) • Source 2 (in Chinese) • Source 3 (in Chinese) | Via 1 • Via 2 • Via 3

Meizu announces the smaller Meizu m2

Meizu has announced a smaller variant of its m2 note, the Meizu m2. Coming with an attractive price tag and decent mid-range specs the smartphone is aiming to bring lots of bang for your buck.

The Meizu m2 is built around a 5-inch IPS LCD of 1280x720 pixel resolution with AGC Dragontrail glass protection. At its haeart is a MediaTek MT6735 chipset with a 1.3GHz quad-core Cortex-A53 CPU, Mali T720 GPU and 2GB RAM.

Internal storage is 16GB, expandable by up to 128GB via the microSD card slot. The m2 also features a 13 megapixel F/2.2 rear camera with Samsung sensor and a 5 megapixel F/2.0 front camera to cover your photography needs.

Meizu M2 runs Flyme 4.5 running on top of Android 5.1 and offers dual SIM with LTE, but keep in mind that the second SIM shares its slot with the microSD card so you can't have both.

The smartphone is powered by a 2,500mAh battery that should last for up to 23h of 2G calls or 12h of Wi-Fi web browsing or 680h of stand-by, according to Meizu estimates.

The Meizu m2 will cost 699 Yuan in China ($112) and will come in four different colors - white, gray, blue and pink. All of those feature polycarbonate unibodies that look very similar to the m1.

Source

Android Lollipop with Flyme OS 4.5.1 arrives on Meizu MX4 Pro

As expected, the high-end Meizu MX4 Pro began receiving Android Lollipop. Sized 650MB, the new firmware is seeding to the smartphone over-the-air.

After the update, the smartphone will boot to Android 5.0.1 with Flyme OS 4.5.1A. Meizu MX4 Pro launched with Android 4.4.4 with Flyme OS 4.0.

Reportedly, Meizu MX4 Pro has become significantly more responsive thanks to the new ART runtime in Android Lollipop. The update is also said to improve the accuracy of the device’s home button, as well as partially address its heating issues.

If you are a Meizu MX4 Pro owner, head over to the device’s settings to check if the new firmware is available.

Via

Meizu says it sold 2 million devices last month

Chinese smartphone manufacturer Meizu has announced that it sold around 2 million devices last month. This compares to the 1 and 1.5 million smartphones it sold in the months of December 2014 and January this year, respectively.

Back in February this year, Li Nan, VP of Marketing and Sales at Meizu, said that the company could reach the 20 million figure by the end of the year. However, he also made it clear that it's not something they are aiming to achieve.

The news comes nearly a couple of months after Alibaba Group announced that it will invest $590 million in the smartphone manufacturer.

Via

Leaked roadmap shows Meizu's plans for Lollipop updates

A purported leaked roadmap showing Meizu's plans for updating its devices to Android Lollipop has surfaced in China today. And it's all good news if you own a flagship device made by the Chinese company.

According to this leak, Meizu plans to bring the latest version of Android to at least five of its handsets, namely the MX4 Pro (pictured to the left),MX4, MX3, MX2, and M1. This is quite something, when you consider that the MX2 was released back in 2012.

Regarding the affordable M1, keep in mind that this designation could refer to the M1 series, meaning both the M1 and the M1 Note - since they were outed within weeks of each other.

As for the actual schedule, the MX4 Pro and MX4 could be blessed with Lollipop around April 28. The MX3 and MX2 should get their taste in May, while M1 owners will have to wait until June for their treat.

Obviously this isn't official, so things might still change. On one hand, it's good to see phones from 2012 running the latest version of Android, yet on the other hand by June Lollipop will have been out for around eight months already - so maybe in the future Meizu can also work on how fast it delivers such updates.

Source | Via

Meizu enters India, m1 to come in April

Meizu's official entry on the Indian market has long been called for by local consumers, and finally the Chinese company has listened. One of the most prominent manufacturers originating in China, Meizu had reportedly been prepping for its arrival in India for some time, as evidenced by social media messages from as early as the beginning of February.

And what would be the best pioneer to mark the company's foray into the vast Indian market, if not the capable but bargain priced Meizu m1? The smartphone boasts a 5-inch display, with a somewhat unusual 1,280 x 768 resolution for a solid 300ppi density.

The Meizu m1 is equipped with a Mediatek MT6732 chipset with its quad-core Cortex-A53 processor clocked at 1.5GHz. A single gig of RAM is all you get at the moment, although a 2GB version may see the light of day to better compete with the updated version of the Xiaomi Redmi 2. the 8GB internal storage is easily expandable via microSD.

The m1 is more than adequately equipped in the camera department as well, with a 13MP main unit and a 5MP selfia snapper. What's more the m1 also brings quad-band LTE connectivity. All that is expected to come at the reasonable price of around INR7,000 (~$110) and should be available, starting in April.

Via

Meizu again rumoured to partner with Nokia on MX4 Supreme

A couple of months ago, there were rumors that Meizu will partner with Nokia on a new smartphone codenamed the MX4 Supreme. Although those rumors were quickly put to rest by Meizu's Vice President of Science and Technology Li Nan, they have resurfaced, and this time in the form of a poster (shown below) which was published on a Weibo account called Ubuntu Team.

While it's difficult to understand what it all means, especially the mention of the Nokia Lumia 1030, it's quite clear that the Supreme will be powered by Nokia, which will be responsible for the hardware and software of the smartphone.

It's worth mentioning that because of the Microsoft deal, the Finnish company cannot manufacturer or sell devices carrying the Nokia branding until 2016.

Source | Via