Meizu has had an interesting history, pulling out of the smartphone market after some turbulent years. Now that it is under the wing of car manufacturer Yellowthe company is about to return with the launch of the Meizu 20 series 30 March. Since that’s still a few weeks away, while we wait, let’s take a look back at Meizu’s most interesting phones.
The company was founded in 2003 and initially made MP3 players. The first phone was unveiled in January 2007. It was called the Meizu M8 and ran “Mymobile” software based on Windows CE 6.0. However, getting the phone to market turned out to be a big problem. Meizu brought the M8 to CeBIT in March 2008, more than a year after first announcing it, and it was still in a prototype stage with barely working software. But that was just the beginning of the M8’s woes.
According to Apple’s lawyers, it bore more than a passing resemblance to the iPhone. After an emergency overhaul, the phone also changed its name to the “miniOne”. The lawsuit continued and production of the M8 was finally halted in 2010 and all sales banned.
Meizu M8: original design • redesign (image source)
Launched in early 2011, the Meizu M9 was the company’s first Android phone. This model was powered by the Samsung Hummingbird chipset, a year after the original Galaxy S used it. This was just the beginning of Meizu’s relationship with Samsung.
This was followed by the Meizu MX, which was also the first official outing of the heavily modified Android skin known as “Flyme OS”. The MX also used an Exynos chip and had a sharp 4.0-inch qHD display. Meizu still openly borrowed from Apple’s designs, as we noted our review.
Meizu MX
Skip to the Meizu MX3, its claim to fame was that it was the first smartphone with 128 GB of built-in storage. That was a lot for 2013. And if you’ll allow us a little detour, flagships 10 years later should have more than 128 GB of base storage – we said it there. By the way, this phone used the Exynos 5410 Octa (aka the Galaxy S4- chipset). Meizu was perhaps the largest Exynos customer outside of Samsung itself.
Meizu MX3
The company opened up to new suppliers and the Meizu MX4 as of late 2014 was the first to use a MediaTek chipset. It had an eye-catching 5.36in bezel-less screen (at least on the sides), offered great battery life and sound quality, and the 20.7MP camera was solid too.
At the moment, Meizu’s main problem was that its phones were relatively unknown outside of China at a time when Xiaomi and OnePlus were expanding rapidly.
Meizu MX4
2014 Meizu M1 Note also deserves attention, this was the first of the affordable Note series. Despite the relatively weak MediaTek MT6762 chipset that only had Cortex-A53 cores, the 5.5-inch 1080p display used a fancy IGZO panel (although the quality wasn’t quite as good as on Sharp phones).
Meizu M1 Note
Okay, let’s move on to the really good stuff. The Meizu Pro5 was an enviable flagship – the one-piece metal body was sleek, as was the 2.5D Gorilla Glass on the front that sat above the 5.7-inch AMOLED (1080p) display.
This phone was powered by the Exynos 7420 Octa. A few months earlier, Samsung launched its Galaxy S6 with that exact chip and only that chip (Qualcomm had a moment in 2015). The Sony-made 16MP camera sensor on the back featured OIS and produced impressive images. We concluded our review saying that the Meizu Pro 5 was an easy phone to recommend, if only people could buy one – Meizu’s distribution network was still seriously lacking compared to the competition.
Meizu Pro5
Then in 2016 came the Meizu Pro 6. It was smaller than its predecessor with a 5.2 inch Super AMOLED display, but no less premium (metal body, Gorilla Glass 4, 3D Touch, you name it). However, the reason we remember this model is different: it was one of the few phones to use MediaTek’s Helio X25, a rare chipset with a 10-core CPU.
Meizu Pro 6
The three-cluster design had two Cortex-A72 (2.5 GHz), four A53 (2.0 GHz), and four more A53 (1.4 GHz). This beat most Android phones in multi-core benchmarks, but not all (the Galaxy S7 edge and Huawei P9 in particular came out in our testing, if only just). However, the Mali-T880 MP4 GPU underperformed in comparison.
The Helio X20 was an earlier 10-core design (same hardware, but the A72 pair ran at 2.3 GHz), and a few months later Meizu used it in the more affordable MX6. There was also the Meizu Pro 6 Plus after that, which switched to the Exynos 8890 Octa, the same chipset the Galaxy S7 used earlier in 2016. The Plus had a 5.7-inch QHD display (also with 3D touch).
Meizu MX6 and Meizu Pro 6 Plus
Meizu always tended to think outside the box, at least when it wasn’t trying to copy the iPhone. The Meizu Pro 7 And Pro 7plus launched in mid-2017 and in addition to 5.2-inch FHD and 5.7-inch QHD Super AMOLED displays on the front respectively, they also had 2-inch AMOLED displays on the back (240 x 536px).
Meizu Pro 7 Plus
We’ve seen quite a few gaming phones since then with a secondary display on the back, as well as phones like the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra. This screen could work as a viewfinder when taking selfies with the main camera, but unfortunately the Always On functionality was missing.
The Pro 7 high edition and the Plus used the Helio X30, the last of the X-series and MediaTek’s last attempt at a 10-core CPU. The base Pro 7 had a Helio P25 (8-core CPU) instead. The Pro 7 series also marked the first time Meizu released a dual camera, although it was a combination of color and black and white rather than an ultra-wide or telephoto lens.
Meizu continued to create interesting designs over the years, but the company never grew as big and popular as some of its compatriots. It eventually ended operations and released a new phone every now and then. Before we wrap up, we wanted to mention an interesting prototype: the Meizu Zero.
The Meizu Zero prototype was never released commercially
Can you guess why it’s called that? It had exactly zero buttons, speakers or charging ports. The side buttons were replaced with capacitive sensors, the speaker used a piezoelectric transducer, the battery was charged through a proprietary 18W wireless system, data transfer was carried out via mobile networks and Wi-Fi.
None of that was unseen before, HTC U12+ got rid of the side buttons for example, Sharp and Xiaomi had piezo speakers, wireless charging was pretty well established in 2019. However, this was the first phone to combine all of these in one place while at the same time providing all discard moving parts.
With Apple grumbling about putting a USB-C port on its iPhones, many are speculating that it wants to ditch the wired charging port altogether. This is hardly new speculation, we’ve heard some version of it this rumor for years now. But if it actually does, it’s a rare chance for Meizu to say “we did it first”.
What happened to the Meizu Zero? It started great, winning an iF Gold Award for its “non-porous” design (Google’s Pixel 4 and 4 XL also took gold that year). However, things fell apart just weeks later, Meizu used one crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo to try and promote the phone and set a modest goal of $100,000.
After two months of campaigning, the phone had just 29 backers, of which only 24 pre-ordered the phone for the, say, ambitious price of $1,300. Someone bought the “Pioneering Unit” single for $3,000, though we can’t promise someone wasn’t working at Meizu at the time. Even with the super-low funding target, that wasn’t enough and the very modest interest led the company to cancel the project altogether.
Meizu never lacked ambition and when it did its own thing it produced some truly unique designs. We’re not saying they were all good, but they were unique.
We hope the company maintains the same spirit and expands into more markets – with Geely’s financial backing and global retail presence, it looks set to do just that. Geely’s interest goes beyond diversifying its portfolio. Meizu is working on an infotainment software called FlymeAuto, which will promote vertical integration in the Geely family of products.
What’s your favorite Meizu worthy – one of the phones we mentioned above or one of the ones we skipped? And do you think the Zero concept had merit or was it just a gimmick?