As you all know I’ve been following Chinese phone and tech for a very long time and believe it or not but I was once a pretty major Meizu fanboy! Fanboy enough to queue up on the day of the Meizu M9 in China to buy their first Android phone!
Over the years I’ve owned the Meizu MX, MX3, MX4, MX4 Pro, MX5, M1, M1 Note, M2….etc I’ve had a lot of Meizu’s but I’ve also become quite bored of the brand and this isn’t the firs time.
After the launch of the M9, Meizu created their own Meizu brand design with the MX, and it hasn’t really changed all that much since then all the way up to the latest Pro 6 models.
Yes, Meizu have gone to metal bodies and they have gone back to physical home buttons, but the design hasn’t changed, and worst of all, specification changes have become stagnent.
Gizchina News of the week
What Meizu really needs to do now is think outside the box just as its fans are doing with renders like this!
Chinese tech sites are calling this bezel less Meizu render “Kerosene” because it is setting the Chinese tech industry alight, they go as far as saying that this new phone could launch soon.
This is very doubtful though. The image is clearly fake, and we don’t imagine Meizu straying to far from their very bland designs.
It’s a sad situation for the brand, but it comes down to either “innovation or die”.
i doubt that they have to change disgn a lot..sure their phones look a like but they got a great build quality on vivo level and ahead of xiaomi in my opinion
the only thing that i dislike is the amount of phones they launch all with the same specs
like how many Helio P10 phones do they have?
I too have always been a big Meizu fan, followed them ever since the days of the M6 and m3 mp3 players and remember writing about their windows CE based M8 phone when android was still in its infancy. I agree innovation is important but in general meizu are simply following the trends in the industry and in most respects are keeping up with what most companies are offering although it is true that they are definitely not breaking any ground. But lets face it, neither are apple. The main issue for me with meizu though is more a loss of focus and quality control. When you are releasing large numbers of similar handsets then your quality control is inevitably going to suffer. So it seem their resources are spread too thinly and we end up in a situation where they release 10 mediocre phones instead of focusing on directing resources to refining & bug squashing in their OS, further refining their hardware and most importantly in my opinion their camera processing algorithms.
Around the time of the MX5 it appeared meizu could soon start to challenge the big industry players when it came to mobile photography. Sadly instead they simply started spamming the marketing with handsets and the quality of their camera software and processing algorithms has become mostly stagnant. Even after finally introducing EIS/OIS stabilisation in a couple of the high end models we have still yet to see a really good camera experience from meizu in the the low end/ mid range or high end.
This is at odds with other companies like oneplus who while not prefect are consistently refining their OS, focusing on quick updates and improving their camera software, so much so that they have now gained a lot of acclaim in the industry. I also feel the Mediatek investment is hurting meizu. It almost appears they are required to hit certain shipping quotas on specific cpus and end up releasing similar handsets with only tiny upgrades and price tags that are not competitive with phones running more powerful cpu’s (ZUK and Xiaomi good exmaples).
I have had 2 Meizu phones. The M2 Note was OK but the screen was a fingerprint magnet. Loved the Pro 5, however. My main comment here is that we can get bored with ANY device brand if we use it too much with little variety. I don’t think Meizu is any more boring or lacking in innovation than any other brand. Using new brands is more exciting for the same reason that anything different is exciting but that isn’t really a criticism of any one type of experience that people choose to stick with for long periods. Some people need more variety. Others are unhappy with change, saying, “It’s not the same.” On the other hand, ALL businesses need to “innovate or die” but I wouldn’t say that this was truer of Meizu than any other business.
What phone do you use now ?
Xiaomi Mi 5.
Ahh took ages to write my comment! why was it deleted?
Er, it doesn’t seem like anything was deleted. May have been a website glitch, sorry about that.
Ahh i just checked my profile, said ‘detected as spam’ lol. I have said that it wasn’t spam, so hopefully should come through now maybe?
I see your message while disqus is still loading, but then it disappear once totally loaded
I’ve said it in the past, either they are struggling or they just want to cash the maximum possible in this phase, since a lot of their latest products have been disappointing in terms of specifications/price ratio compared to competitors, their build quality is always very good, but now on this aspect xiaomi came close also in the budget phones while offering more performant products: when they went for mt6753, xiaomi was already going for helio x10, when they offered P10, Xiaomi was giving the X25 in same priced products, without considering their best budget ones with Snapdragon processors. If you add to the picture few to none innovations, you could clearly see there is something wrong there.
I totally agree with every single word. First they tried to compete with xiaomi by decent price/performance ratio phones, when good old mx series was in the 1799yuan price tag. Now they’re trying somehow to go the vivo route with overpriced phones, not considering that it doesn’t take just an high price tag to be a new vivo and sell accordingly. They spent the last years in copying whoever was on top, without spending anytime to create their own identity. Furthermore, they did this adding odd choices on top like the overconfident, overused partnership with mediatek and the one with alibaba… I wonder for how long they’ll still be in business honestly
Andi is back. Hell yeah..
I’ve had the Meizu MX 4-core for 3 years now, and the phone still works well. Back in 2012 when it was launched, I believed it was the only phone to natively support FLAC audio files and I was a music lover so I had to have a phone that can reproduce high-quality music. And of course, Flyme. But now, every thing they come up with is just purely run-off-the-mill. Disappointed here.
I agree with all of you. Their prices get higher and less competitive.The pricing is quite confusing. The prices are not the same in their official shops and their website. Sometimes it is 40% higher in the shop and prices on the cheaper models are not displayed. A lot of colours are not available in the shop and the website. The sales people seems also confused.
It also seems that they do not have access to Qualcomm SOCs as they have some past copyright infringement that they did not settle.
The positive points of Meizu are Flyme OS (this is the only reason that I still buy this brand) that is really different and more convenient to use than other android brands, without major bugs. The build of the phones are good. The design is good but nothing outstanding.
Meizu is known for good sound. Maybe, they should also focus on this part. For example using dolby, top quality loudspeaker…
I too have always been a big Meizu fan, followed them ever since the days of the M6 and m3 mp3 players and remember writing about their windows CE based M8 phone when android was still in its infancy. I agree innovation is important but in general meizu are simply following the trends in the industry and in most respects are keeping up with what most companies are offering although it is true that they are definitely not breaking any ground. But lets face it, neither are apple. The main issue for me with meizu though is more a loss of focus and quality control. When you are releasing large numbers of similar handsets then your quality control is inevitably going to suffer. So it seem their resources are spread too thinly and we end up in a situation where they release 10 mediocre phones instead of focusing on directing resources to refining & bug squashing in their OS, further refining their hardware and most importantly in my opinion their camera processing algorithms.
Around the time of the MX5 it appeared meizu could soon start to challenge the big industry players when it came to mobile photography. Sadly instead they simply started spamming the marketing with handsets and the quality of their camera software and processing algorithms has become mostly stagnant. Even after finally introducing EIS/OIS stabilisation in a couple of the high end models we have still yet to see a really stand out camera experience from meizu in the the low end/ mid range or high end. They are very medicore in this respect in comparison to top flight competition.
This is at odds with other companies like oneplus who while not prefect are consistently refining their OS, focusing on quick updates to latest android versions and improving their camera software and customer service so much so that they have now gained a lot of acclaim in the industry. I also feel the Mediatek investment is hurting meizu. It almost appears they are required to hit certain shipping quotas on specific cpus and end up releasing similar handsets with only tiny upgrades and price tags that are not competitive with phones running more powerful cpu’s (ZUK and Xiaomi good examples).
Xiaomi have stolen headlines recently innovation wise with the introduction of the Mi Mix but sadly while that phone looks quite forward thinking xiaomi too suffer from similar problems to meizu with quality control and handset spamming. So the Mi Mix’s high price tag combined with average camera performance and other issues means that while innovative in certain respects they are still in the same boat as meizu somewhat.
In my mind meizu has all the tools to be a top 5 manufacturer. But because of a lack of focus/quality control their reputation is being tarnished. Would really like to see them taking foreign markets more serious as well by solidifying their distribution channels Instead of outsourcing the handling of sales to local distributors and instead focus on online sales with local service centres like oneplus has done.
They need to bring back 16:10 screens and start unlocking their phones, no way can I use them stock with that much bloatware.
my main problem is their locked bootloader..if it’s android,it should be friendly so unlocked bootloader plz
the second problem is their price especially by CPU is overpriced products versus competitors .
the third is of course their unchanged designs like HTC & maybe worse….come on you were once a known big player so please updated designs. different completely each model to another model.