Meizu
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Geely founder buys majority stake in troubled phone maker Meizu
Geely owns Meizu, as it tries to tighten the worlds of phones and cars together.
Google initiative warns of Android security flaws in non-Pixel devices
Google has launched an initiative to improve the security of third-party Android devices by disclosing flaws.
Meizu says its port-free Zero phone was a failed marketing stunt
You may recall that a little over a month ago, Meizu launched a crowdfunding campaign for its futuristic "Zero" port-free smartphone, but at $1,299 a piece (plus that single $2,999 "Exclusive Pioneering Unit"), it comes as no surprise that the overly-ambitious Indiegogo project failed with just 29 backers. Despite the existence of working units, there's no word on the Zero's future at this moment, but in response to a related thread on Meizu's official forum, founder and CEO Jack Wong gave a surprisingly upfront -- if not a little disheartening -- one-liner. "This crowdfunding project was just the marketing team messing about," Wong said, "the holeless phone is just a development project from the R&D department, we never intended to mass-produce this project."
Meizu crowdfunds its port-free smartphone on Indiegogo
There's a lot of talk right now about how much is too much for a smartphone in these increasingly tight times. Meizu is hoping that there's enough folks out there with fat wallets to justify splashing out on the Zero, its "holeless smartphone." The company won't just sell you one, however, and has instead slapped the device onto Indiegogo for users to pre-order. The price? $1,299.
Meizu made a smartphone without any ports
Some phonemakers followed Apple's lead and got rid of the headphone jack, but Meizu has gone above and beyond that. The company has announced a new phone called "Zero," which doesn't have a headphone jack, a charging port and a speaker grill. It doesn't even come with a SIM card slot and buttons you'd usually see on a phone -- the only elements that disturb the surface of its all-display, 7.8mm-thick ceramic unibody are its 12MP and 20MP rear cameras and two pinholes. One is a microphone, while the other is for hard resets.
China's smartphone market sees its largest drop in five years
There's no question that China's smartphone industry is in a tough spot, but it's apparently worse than expected. Canalys has estimated that smartphone shipments in the country plummeted 21 percent year-over year in the first quarter of 2018 -- the steepest drop since 2013. Almost everyone saw their shipments go down, with Oppo and Vivo (both owned by BBK) taking the worst hit with a 10 percent drop. Gionee, Meizu and Samsung shipped less than half as many devices. Even Huawei, the clear frontrunner, grew by a mere 2 percent.
Meizu Pro 7 has a tiny selfie screen on its backside
It's been a while since a Meizu smartphone last caught our attention, but in a twist of fate, the freshly announced Pro 7 flagship series manages to pack some surprises. Most notably, these devices are the work of legendary design studio, Frog, and they feature a tiny 1.9-inch 240 x 536 (307 ppi) AMOLED touchscreen on the back. This display lights up automatically when you flip the phone over, and it serves as a weather clock, a simple notification area, a music player and a mirror for taking selfies using the main camera. As silly as it sounds, this may actually be a more practical implementation than the "Second Screen" on LG's V series plus its more recent Q8.
Meizu fires back at Oppo with its own high-speed phone charging
Last year, Oppo rolled into Mobile World Congress with what seemed like the fastest battery-charging tech in town. These days, the Chinese company is still eager to show off its impressive, periscope-inspired smartphone camera, but Meizu has been more than happy to pick up where Oppo left off. Now, in fairness, Meizu's Super mCharge isn't quite as fast as Oppo's SuperVOOC solution, but it's still damn fast. Specifically, it can take a 3,000mAh battery from zero to full in 20 minutes -- and it might be a little safer too.
Meizu hopes Indiegogo can fund its first US product
Meizu is a company most Americans likely haven't heard of. But it's actually one of the largest consumer electronics brands in China, having sold over 20 million smartphones last year. Its latest and greatest handheld is the Meizu Pro 6, which boasts a 5.2-inch Super AMOLED display, a 21-megapixel camera and a whopping 10-core processor. Now the company has its sights set on the US market. But it's not planning on introducing a phone here. Instead it's launching a wireless speaker. And it's doing so, surprisingly enough, through crowdfunding site Indiegogo.
Meizu's 10-core phone gets a 10-LED camera flash
You may recall that the world's first 10-core mobile chip, the MediaTek Helio X20 series, is expected to hit the market this month. Indeed, today Meizu announced its Pro 6 smartphone which has nabbed exclusivity over the flagship Helio X25, yet it only starts from 2,499 yuan or about $390 off-contract. The specs don't disappoint: You get a gorgeous 5.2-inch 1080p Super AMOLED screen, 2.5D Gorilla Glass 3, 4GB of RAM, internal storage starting at 32GB, front-side fingerprint reader, LTE Cat 6 radio and a USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-C port (up to 5 Gbps). The only thing missing here is NFC, if you're a fan of that.
MediaTek's 10-core mobile chip hits the market next month
As a believer of the old "quality not quantity" saying, Qualcomm backed away from octa core in favor of just four custom-designed cores for its Snapdragon 820 chipset. MediaTek, being the pioneer of octa-core mobile CPU, simply shrugged and teased its upcoming 10-core, tri-cluster Helio X20 last May. So where is it now? Well, at today's Shenzhen event, MediaTek co-COO and EVP Jeffrey Ju told Engadget that the first Helio X20 devices will finally be hitting the markets next month. To heat things up a little, MediaTek also announced the Helio X25 which is just a faster version of the Helio X20: 2.5GHz instead of 2.3GHz for the Cortex-A72 performance cluster, and 850MHz instead of 780MHz for the Mali-T880 MP4 GPU. This will also be getting to consumers' hands soon after the Helio X20, according to the exec.
A top Meizu phone can't hide Ubuntu's flaws
The last 12 months have been disastrous for the minor league of mobile operating systems. Jolla's Sailfish OS has started to capsize, while Blackberry has all but abandoned BlackBerry 10 for Android. Firefox OS, at least on phones, is but a few dying embers and Windows 10 Mobile has arrived with a muffled thud. Does Canonical and Ubuntu share the same fate? Perhaps, although the pair are fighting defiantly this month with a new flagship phone, courtesy of the Chinese manufacturer Meizu.
Meizu unveils the most powerful Ubuntu phone yet
Once again, it's the Chinese smartphone manufacturer Meizu that's helping Canonical sell its vision of an Ubuntu handset. Following the MX4, the company has unwrapped the "Ubuntu Edition" Pro 5, which promises the best spec sheet in an Ubuntu phone to date. That is, without you installing the platform on another device manually, anyway. It's a large handset, dominated by a 5.7-inch AMOLED display (1080p) and a small fingerprint sensor. Under the hood is an eight-core Samsung Exynos 7420 processor, backed up by either 3GB or 4GB of RAM, which varies depending on whether you choose 32GB or 64GB of internal storage.
The next Ubuntu phone is here, but you'll need an invite
Another Ubuntu phone, another unusual launch. After the BQ Aquaris E4.5, which debuted with a series of online flash sales, Canonical is following up with an invite-only handset built by Meizu. Yep, the same Meizu that once hoped to release an Ubuntu phone in 2014. The new MX4 "Ubuntu Edition" has been available to developers in China since May, but starting tomorrow you'll be able to order one in Europe too. At least, you will if you're lucky enough to receive an invite. Canonical and Meizu aren't revealing how many will be available each day, so you'll just have to visit their teaser site, complete the "origami wall" and hope for the best. The company is also staying tight-lipped about whether the invite system will eventually be dropped and if the MX4 will later be sold in other markets.
Ubuntu's answer to Android is finally here, but it still needs work
At long last, the first Ubuntu phones are here. It's been more than two years since Canonical first showed off its Linux-based mobile platform, and fans have been clamoring for consumer devices ever since. The Ubuntu Edge never made its ambitious $32 million crowdfunding target, and the first handsets from BQ and Meizu were delayed last year. But finally, it's all starting to come together. BQ has started selling its "Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition" in Europe and Meizu shouldn't be too far behind with its modified MX4.
Year of the Goat: 11 Chinese smartphone brands to watch
2014 had been a wonderful year for the ever-competitive Chinese smartphone market. We saw the birth of new brands, the record of world's thinnest phone broken three times, and a couple of companies entering India with great reception (although not without some struggle). So with MWC following right after Chinese New Year, what better way to celebrate both than to look at the top Chinese smartphone brands? Granted, not all of these companies will be on the show floor next week (not Xiaomi or Oppo, for instance), but there's no stopping us from saying "ni hao" to them, anyway.
Chinese giant Alibaba making a 'strategic investment' in smartphones
What do you do when you're the biggest online retailer in the world, with an IPO valued at more than Amazon and eBay, combined? You do all kinds of things, but you also decide to throw some substantial cash into a smartphone maker. In this case, Alibaba says it's buying a minority stake in Meizu for $590 million -- making its recent $10 million investment in OUYA look like spare change. According to a joint statement from both Meizu and Alibaba, it'll help the web giant spread its own mobile operating system (Aliyun) through Meizu's smartphones (keeping the customers coming the Alibaba's myriad services), while giving the phone maker better sales clout and visibility.
The first Ubuntu phone arrives next week, but there's a catch
It's been a long time coming, but finally Canonical is ready to release its first Ubuntu phone. After teaming up with Meizu and BQ almost a year ago, we're getting a (sort of) new handset from the latter; it's actually a repurposed version of its Aquaris E4.5, a mid-range smartphone that normally ships with Android. The new "Ubuntu Edition" keeps all of the same hardware, which is nothing to write home about. It has a 4.5-inch, 540x960 resolution display, a 1.3GHz quad-core MediaTek Cortex A7 processor, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage. For shutterbugs, there's also a 8-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 5-megapixel snapper on the front. At €169.90 ($195), the specs are pretty unremarkable.
Meizu's M1 Note is a dirt-cheap iPhone 5c on steroids
While many Chinese smartphone makers have recently stepped up their efforts in delivering more original designs, we can't say that's the case with Meizu's latest offering. In fact, we already knew the cheeky company was up to something when the Chinese media received an iPhone 5c chassis in their invitations, and now we know why. As you can see above, the plastic M1 Note announced today comes in the shamelessly identical set of colors as the iPhone 5c: green, pink, white, yellow and blue. Starting at just CN¥999 (about $160) unsubsidized, this is Meizu's cheapest Android smartphone yet, as it attempts to compete directly with the likes of Xiaomi and Huawei in the sub-CN¥1,000 entry-level market.
Engadget Daily: The Meizu MX4 Pro, why GoPro's mid-range camera is its best, and more!
The GoPro Hero4 Black can shoot 4K at 30 fps. So why, then, does James Trew prefer the cheaper and less-equipped Hero4 Silver? Two words: the touchscreen. That's not all we have on deck, though -- read on for the rest of our news highlights from the last 24 hours, including YouTube's latest licensing battle, the Meizu MX4 Pro and Motorola's smart key fob.
