Meizu: history of development
The history of Meizu begins in 1998 with a man named Huang Xiuzhang, who is very fond of new gadgets and electronics. He bought new devices on the Internet and introduced new technologies at home. After that, he shared on the Internet, under the pseudonym Jack Wong, his impressions and expressed his new ideas and opinions. And then one day the creator of the future successful company decided to listen to music, but neither the sound quality nor the design of the device suited him, and Huang Xiuzhang decided to create his own MP3 player. This can be considered the moment of foundation of the company.
In 2003, she released her first music player Meizu MX. It was equipped with 512 MB of memory and was a 100% copy of the player from the South Korean company Cowon - iAudio CW300. But this caused numerous accusations of plagiarism, which forced the company to start working on developing its own design.
Revising its policy, the company began to produce original design players. The first such was Meizu ME, it had joystick control and was powered by AAA AA batteries. Thanks to him, the company began to be recognized among the mass of other devices, which had a positive effect on its future success.
In 2005, the company changed its logo to a new one, which is still in use today.
And also for the year released 8 players, the main feature of which was a joystick, convenient for switching. Like Meizu ME, they were made in the original design, improving and becoming more concise in use. One of them is Meizu E3, which not without reason found love among listeners and became the most popular product in the domestic market at that time. The main success factor was the use of a high-quality Philips Nexperia PNX0102 chip.
The Meizu E3c was released, not much different in design from its predecessor relatives, but enclosed in a seamless metal shell.
But the Meizu M6 is rightfully considered a breakthrough for the company itself. In addition to playing music, the device could play videos and also had a photo gallery that you could upload to it. Meizu X6 was, like Meizu E3c, enclosed in a solid seamless metal case, but had a touch screen, and was not controlled by a joystick. At the time, this was quite unusual. Also, new firmware was constantly released on the player, making its work more stable.
In Russia, it was sold under other names (Ritmix RF-9200 and Powerman XL850) and was little known. And in his native China, he beat the world-famous iPod in sales.
The first Meizu M8 smartphone was based on the Windows CE 6.0 kernel, with its own applications and interface, which, in terms of processing, was on par with the very popular HTC TouchFLO at that time. The design of the phone was reminiscent of the sensational iPhone from Apple, which in the future will still be suppressed. The whole world learned about Meizu and its competitive product, and in China the device was sold at 50,000 copies every month.
In 2010, Apple still demanded to stop the production and sale of the M8, as the device had too much resemblance to the iPhone. Because of what, the release of the new Meizu M9 was postponed.
In January 2011, the world saw the long-awaited Meizu M9 touch phone, created on the growing Android platform, replacing. The key features of this novelty include attention to detail, a high-quality Sharp Retina display with a resolution of 960 × 640 pixels, good sound due to the presence of stereo speakers, a Samsung Hummingbird processor with a frequency of 1 Ghz and a user shell that bears little resemblance to the classic interface at that time Androida 2.2 (Froyo).
The case in appearance still continued to resemble the iPhone, but was made of more practical matte plastic than the Meizu M8.
A year later, Meizu MX was released, with a completely redesigned Android, called Flyme OS. The developers made the operating system simple, but at the same time not giving the user much choice, since everything was already decided for you by the Meizu team, all you had to do was enjoy the beautiful design and ease of use.
The Meizu MX was equipped with a Sharp ASV display, an 8 MP camera, and was powered by a 1400 MHz Samsung Exynos 4210 dual-core processor, one of the most powerful at the time.
The model became very successful and became widely known outside of China. She was noticed by the largest resources dedicated to mobile technology, such as Engadget, Gsmarena, Phonearena, Slashgear, etc.
Some time later, the Meizu MX 4-core, an updated modification, went on sale. The differences were a faster 1500MHz Samsung Exynos 4212 quad-core processor and more memory and battery.
In November 2012, the Meizu MX2 was introduced with the Wolfson audio chip. The difference from the MX was a slightly improved design, an increase in RAM up to 2 GB, a completely redesigned Flyme OS shell and an increase in the display. In the new model, a unique multifunctional touch circle was implemented under the display instead of a button, which was subsequently partially copied by many people.
In September 2013, the flagship Meizu MX3 saw the light, a logical continuation of the MX2 with a 5.1-inch screen. The company did not simply increase the display diagonal, but made sure that the user could comfortably interact with the smartphone with one hand, reduced the frames and indents, and optimized Flyme OS. The company also focused on the sound in headphones, setting the bar for its competitors. The filling was 2 GB of RAM, a Samsung 5410 Octa 1600 MHz processor, and a PowerVR SGX544 graphics accelerator. Meizu MX3 went on sale with four values of internal memory: 16, 32, 64 and 128 GB.
In order to increase the number of released applications, Meizu announced that it will give 100% of the profits from their sale to developers. These actions have spurred millions of mobile application developers to create more and more new products.
September 2, 2014 was marked by the release of Meizu MX4. The body of the device was made of 6061 T6 aircraft aluminum, and the company also used a new assembly technology and created a thin shock-absorbing layer between the display itself and the 0.3 mm Gorilla Glass 3 protective glass. Meizu MX4 screen size was 5.36 inches. The developers endowed the device with an eight-core processor (4 A17 cores at 2.2 GHz + 4 A7 cores at 1.7 GHz; the cores can work simultaneously) and 2 GB of RAM. The MX4 is also equipped with a 3100 mAh non-removable battery.
On November 19, 2014, an improved version of Meizu MX4 Pro is released. The differences were in larger dimensions, increased RAM up to 3 GB, replacement of the graphics accelerator for more performance. Both versions of the MX4 are available with three sizes of internal memory: 16, 32 and 64 GB.
The MX4 runs on an improved version of Flyme OS 4.0 based on the Android 4.4.4 KitKat operating system. Along with this version of the operating system, the user received 40 TB of cloud storage from Meizu.
Following the success of the MX4 and MX4 Pro, the company launches the Meizu M1 Note and Meizu M1 Mini, which are budget phones that boost their profits by 45%. The display in the Meizu N1 Note is a 5.5-inch Sharp newmode 2 IGZO panel with a resolution of 1920 * 1080 pixels, protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3 with an oleophobic coating. Inside, there is an eight-core processor 1700 MHz and 2 GB of RAM, a Mali-T760 mp2 video processor with a frequency of 700 MHz. This device was an excellent example of the balance of price and quality and quickly gained popularity among buyers and the media.
In June 2015, a sequel to Meizu M1 Note was released under the name Meizu M2 Note. In the new smartphone, all characteristics were reduced by replacing the processor with a decrease in clock frequency, as well as replacing the video processor with a weaker one. All this led to a decrease in battery consumption, which made it possible to work without recharging up to 2 days, and a reduction in the sale price relative to its predecessor from $200 to $170. Thanks to such changes, Meizu M2 Note became a bestseller in 2015.
On June 30, 2015, the world saw the Meizu MX5. The device practically did not differ from its predecessors, the main feature was the fingerprint scanner on the mechanical Home button. The LCD display has also been replaced with a Samsung AMOLED screen, moving towards the standard 16:9 aspect ratio, like all phones of this class. The superiority of the new screen lies in its 45% lower power consumption. Powered by an MX5 processor (MT6795) with eight 2.2GHz Cortex A53 cores, 3GB of RAM and a new 700MHz PowerVR G6200 GPU. It comes in three versions: 16, 32 and 64 GB of internal memory.
And in the end, I want to say that Meizu (Mei - a person in a trend, Zu - a group of people) literally translates as "People in a trend", so if you want to be in a trend, then this brand is for you.