Meizu have had some big phone launches with Mediatek powered phones over the past 12 months, and another might be in the works.
Following Meizu we have seen them release phones one after the other, even when it has meant making new phones obsolete before their time. It’s odd to see but not unique to the Zhuhai phone maker (Xiaomi also released the Mi4c as an alternative to the Mi4i after just a few months), but surely we can’t be expected to see the Meizu MX6 so soon can we?
News from Chinese media claims that Meizu are hoping to be the world’s first phone maker to release a Helio X20 phone. The X20 is the first 10 core chipset and the next exciting MTK processor to be made available to Chinese phone makers.
Currently Meizu offer the Meizu MX5 with Mediatek Helio X10 chip, and the newly launch Meizu Pro 5 with Samsung Exynos processor. Their next phone will most likely be the Meizu MX6, and that will come with a Helio X20.
Sources in China say that Meizu seem happy with the rest of the MX5 hardware and that the MX6 will keep the same 3GB RAM and 21 mega-pixel rear camera. A launch date of the first quarter of 2016 has been suggested too.
Launching the first Helio X20 phone will be great in terms of marketing, but for Meizu it might do more harm than good. Meizu fans have already seen the MX4, MX4 Pro, M1, M1 Note, MX5, M2 and M2 note come and go in just 12 months, how will they react to the release of another phone?
They are becoming like Elephone which is not a model for success. The Pro 5 and MX5 are already too similar that one is going to cannibalize sales of the other. They should wait at least until the spring time to launch a new phone.
Please Meizu anything but an elephone
Business wise it may make little sense but I like the spirit of Elephone and I think more OEMs should emulate it (if they also find a practical way to do that of course).
The thing with Elephone is that it is the first company that seems to be clearly bent towards hardware. That’s very important, as lack of specialization keeps android phones back for years.
I think on a maturing Industry we need clear cut specialization. Hardware companies should so do hardware (OEMs) and software companies should do software (Google , the MiUI team, Cyanogen, Canonical, etc).
It would allow open source to take root and of course it will give a plethora of options to users, instead of the chaotic thing we have now. For example all phones should come with pre-installed AOSP (no difference than a PC coming with clean Windows) and then letting the user install the software of his choice right there in his phone.
An OS store. You can simply Stay with AOSP and continue using it or choose from the plethora of software other than AOSP (of course many of them would be for sale).
The silliness of hardware companies doing software is so backwards that brought us here. There are perfectly usable devices from 2011 even that people don’t use simply because the OEM decided not to update it. What silliness is that? So much hardware goes to waste simply because most people think like you and say that Hardware makers *have to* create software.
B$ when was the last time that Alienware, or HP, or Dell or … God forbid Acer developed proper software or worse of all loaded our laptops with it? (and when they do we simply call it bloatware)
More companies should emulate releasing a new flagship every two months and dropping support for old models? Many hardware companies are very good at also developing software because they put in the time and resources to develop it. Elephone does not.
What great hardware revelations is Elephone making that the rest of the industry is not? Every one of their phones is carbon copy of the rest of the industry but usually it is a half assed attempt at doing it. I really don’t understand your love affair for this company. There are much better companies in this industry to love.
Hehe, I don’t like Elephone, I don’t know where you got that. Apart from P8000 (with it’s sizable level of issues), there’s hardly any good phone from that company.
I like their style though and hope it would be the future. The hardware companies with good software is/are like 2 or 3, should we really suffer every last chinese’s vendors insufferable skins and framework “optimizations” because they deem important to emulate other OEMs in doing just that?
Did you even read what I wrote? I said that there must be clear distinction of roles. Hardware people should do hardware and software people should do software, trust me I’m a software person and would not need hardware people nowhere near my software.
Do you think your laptop would had been best if every vendor was to put his OS on it and then make it incompatible with every other OS? Because that’s what’s happening in phones and *severely* limits you.
Do you even have an argument against what I said or do you like the status quo just because it is what it is?
You defend Elephone like they are the best company then claim you don’t like them. You are hilarious.
If those laptop vendors all used the same core OS as the base for their own I would have no problems with it. I like variety in life. The difference between your laptop example and phones, is Android. Every Android phone can use just about every Android app regardless of which company puts their spin on it. On a laptop you might be limited due to program compatibility, with Android you don’t have that problem. I like good UI’s and several companies have proven they can create great hardware and great software.
I don’t even like their phones, I dispute your accusations … I merely said that I like their style and that would be especially true if it will bring forth change.
BTW in my example I expect the OS to be running android Apps, by all supporting the Java code of Android apps. It happens similarly on PCs, apart from Mac most/every other OS/distribution that is used by many people can run most/all other apps. That’s why there’s a thing called Wine on linux and/or virtual machines on all OSes. Hell even mac let’s you install Windows via Bootcamp (so you still don’t lose “apps”). There is a *choice* there that you don’t have in phones.
If you like variety then it would have been best to let software to software people, there would have been 10 times the variety that exists now due to the hardware people.
Honestly what wrong do you find with the concept I just described? (you buy a phone running aosp. When you first set it up it asks what’s the os of your choice, you say “none” and continue using your phone, or “choose” from the myriad of options). Right now the only way to have that choice is to install half-baked custom roms and of course you lose support plenty early on in most phones lifecycle. How’s your “variety” better? It’s unsustainable.
At least Elephone realizes that they can choose to do either software *or* hardware well (of course they’re mostly cr*p on both). The rest don’t realize this so we get half-based software or even if the software is well made they stop supporting it in a year or two (they’re hardware companies, they half-heartedly supported their phones for that long anyway), WtF do you like in this concept? Do you really like throwing away perfectly usable hardware just because the company stopped supporting it and let it with a myriad security holes and problems?