With the launch of the Meizu m1 note and MX4 only a few months away the big question on many people’s lips is “why is there an update launching so soon?” the reason could be a failed legal battle against ZTE’s Nubia!
Physical home buttons on Meizu phones are not a new feature. The Meizu M8, M9 and the MX all had varying styles of physical home button, only making way for a capacitive ‘halo’ design in more recent Meizu models.
Of the current range the Meizu MX3, MX4, m1 note and m1 all feature the halo home button, and this might be the reason we are seeing new Meizu phones launch so early on in the life cycle!
According to Chinese media reports, ZTE’s Nubia brand has taken legal action against Meizu suing the Zhuhai based phone maker for patent infringements. The patents (20,123,048,192.3, and 200820116764.7) refer to the appearance of the Nubia Z5 and in particular the ring capacitive home button arrangement.
Gizchina News of the week
The letter above is reportedly from lawyers dealing with the battle of the two companies stating the case and listing the Meizu MX4 and MX3 as two of the phones which infringe on Nubia’s patents.
So have Meizu been forced to launch new versions of their phones due to legal issues by ZTE? And didn’t Meizu launch with a halo style home button before Nubia with the launch of the Meizu MX2 back in 2012?
Meizu have been quiet about the news at this time. What do you make of this news?
[ Source ]
This isn’t really a reason to replace them so soon, they couldn’t redesigned the home button and called it the MX4s! If they do replace it then most likely it will at least be 64 bit I would assume the MT6795 would be the natural choice.
This is a real shame if true, never liked the samsung style home button, always thought it looked cheap and badly designed. Will also mean people will start accusing meizu or copying sammy.
Maybe they will just go to on screen buttons, which I prefer.
Physical buttons all the way. I am so tired of having no place to put my fingers. With a physical button you still have the option of “holding but not pressing”. With all that capacitive stuff the slightest touch is enough to screw with what you’re doing.
Lol both of them stole the design from apple in first place and now they are suing each other?
Nice try. Next time you’ll have to show us your Apple with a glowing circle that responds to swipes + taps and pulses with notifications. Or perhaps you’re confused because the photo accompanying the story is not the patent in question.
guessing schools aren’t that good from your part because if they were you would know how to read, I only said design nothing else.
Design of wha? You need to see a doctor immediately. I’m afraid you have apple brain tumor)
Time to make a triangle
Being able to patent a ring shape capacitive home button which glows is stupid.
Looking at GSMArena, Meizu announced the MX2 in Nov 2012 and ZTE announced the Z5 in Dec 2012. So Meizu came out with that home button a month before ZTE…
patent was filed before
Lollipop uses a circle as the home button in the navigation bar (flanked by a triangle and square on either side).
If this story is true, ZTE’s lawyers are about to get very busy. If you thought the Americans were lawsuit-crazy regarding IP rights, I have a feeling the Chinese are going to get ridiculous lawsuit-crazy in the near the future.
A patent search in China probably involves doing a search for prior art on Baidu.
Make it a oval, everyone likes ovals.
Anyone here dares to state otherwise?
So is ZTE also going to sue Elephone? their P6000 looks pretty much like the Nubia phones.
Interesting, I always thought ZTE had “borrowed” the idea from Meizu and the latter held the patent.