Have you heard of Meizu? Perhaps not, as the smartphone brand has so far concentrated on selling phones in China. The company aims to change all this, and it put out a very brief press release earlier this week, saying, “As the first step in a long-term strategy to pursue the U.S. market, Meizu will preview its line of smartphones at CES 2014.”
So what can we expect from Meizu? Well, the colorful phone you see above is the MX3, and it’s pretty exciting. For a start, it uses Samsung’s Exynos 5 Octa processor – that’s the one with eight cores – and has 2GB of RAM, plus up to 128GB of internal memory. In fact, the MX3 is the first phone in the world to offer such a large amount of storage.
The screen is quite unusual, as it measures 5.1-inches and has a 1800 x 1080 pixel resolution, so it’s not quite 1080p. A Sony 8-megapixel camera is found on the rear of the MX3, and a 2-megapixel Sony cam is above the screen. The sleek chassis is made from stainless steel and magnesium alloy components, with a polycarbonate rear panel. Other features include a high quality Wolfson audio chip, dual-band Wi-Fi, a Gorilla Glass 3 screen and NFC.
The MX3 uses Meizu’s own version of Android. It’s called Flyme OS, and it’s has more in common with the Kindle Fire’s OS than with a UI like Samsung’s TouchWiz. It’s sure to work well, but we’re secretly hoping Meizu will swap it out for plain Android on its international hardware. Of course, the MX3 is Meizu’s range-topping phone, and it does make mid-range hardware too, but we’d be surprised if it didn’t plan to bring the MX3 to America in January.
Meizu knows it has plenty of work ahead if it wants to break into the American smartphone market, but it’s optimistic about it, closing the press release by saying it believes, “There’s room in the U.S. market for another player.” If Meizu brings along the MX3, and prices it competitively, we’re sure it’ll win some fans.
