Meizu's MiniOne M8 GUI showcased further, still devoid of originality

If you had even a sliver of faith left in Meizu that it would change its copycatting ways and turn its heart to creativity, you're probably feeling quite foolish right about now. In a recent posting made to showcase even more interface shots of the MiniOne M8, we got a glimpse at the not at all familiar music interface, more insight on the calling screens and a few more looks (shown after the jump) at how it'll handle messaging. Needless to say, we can just swear we've seen a similar GUI before, but apparently, playing the ignorance card makes it easier to swallow. Oh, and the actual phone now sports a "new edge" with a somewhat grayish motif -- enthralling, we know.

[nightryder21 @ Oct 19th 2007 1:18PM]

the music player UI looks more WMP 11 than iphone.

[bob @ Oct 19th 2007 1:40PM]

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha, yeah, you mean they changed the colour to black?!?! surely this thing cant ever see the light of day?

[Justin @ Oct 19th 2007 1:51PM]

I was going to blast this comment...then i tilted my head 30 degrees and i see it. It's like a hybrid between the two. It's still more iPhone than WM11, but I see it.

[Cpt.Janeway @ Oct 19th 2007 6:40PM]

Its a complete rip, but its whats under the hood that is important, the phone specs out perform that of the current iPhone, but if its going to priced at $799, i don't know why anyone would buy this.

Meizu looks like they are are running out of ideas (if they ever had any), their newest player the Meizu SL, is just a think version of their old player:

http://www.mp4nation.com/products/index.php?PID=m6SLw

[L. Cyphre @ Oct 20th 2007 9:34AM]

>[really] make it to the moon

>JohnTitor< puts on his robe and tinfoil hat.

[Fatima @ Oct 19th 2007 1:21PM]

Thats what the Chinese do best, copy everyone else. Atleast the Russian's copied American aircraft/spacecraft but made them much better.

[alpha @ Oct 19th 2007 1:47PM]

Excuse me, who is the first to send a man-made satellite and a human to the space? On another hand, what prevent your from thinking that the Chinese can make the iphone knock-off better?

[randy @ Oct 19th 2007 2:34PM]

How many people in China can even afford an iPhone? What is Meezoo's plan for this?

[coolant8 @ Oct 25th 2007 3:17PM]

there are at least 3 % of chinese who Are richer than you, 3% out of 1+ billion, thats more than you could imagine.

[JohnTitor @ Oct 19th 2007 6:15PM]

and China is gonna be the first to [really] make it to the moon too

[bombastinator @ Oct 19th 2007 1:24PM]

Originality in GUIs is in a general way bad. Originality increases learning curve. Unless the new idea presents a really significant advantage, boring may be best.

[Jason @ Oct 19th 2007 1:29PM]

What they need to do is one up them by sticking a 160GB hard drive in it.

I'll be first in line.

[M @ Oct 19th 2007 1:53PM]

YES, the 160 HDD would be great but also, a simple back button instead of only a home button. I played witha friends iphone and I kept wanting to just go back, not all the way home to start over...
Damn stupid if you ask me.
M

[Carlos @ Oct 19th 2007 2:27PM]

Back button on the iPhone is always on the top left of the screen

[Jeff Lewis @ Oct 19th 2007 2:41PM]

To Carlos:

Sorry dude - you're wrong. Look at the calculator app. There's no 'back' button on it at all. Some apps do include a 'back' button, but it's up to the app, and I think what M is talking about is application by application - so if you launch Notes and then Calculator, you can go back to Notes without having to go all the way back to the main screen then rerun Notes.

[coolant8 @ Oct 19th 2007 3:25PM]

Ops, accidental dropped my phone...
Ops, my m8 just overheated cuz of the 160gb HDD...
Ops, the HDD just died, and all my files are lost...
Ops, the HDD just run down my battery while talking...
Ops, I wonder why my M8 with HDD weighs like an elephant...
Ops, just got fired by my boss cuz M8's HDD makes too much of nose while talking to him on the phone...

...Just bored, taking piss about putting HDD in a phone...

[Jason @ Oct 19th 2007 3:32PM]

"Ops, accidental dropped my phone..."

Read the drive, park the armeture, and use cache. It works for the iPods.

"Ops, my m8 just overheated cuz of the 160gb HDD..."

The HD only spins to put information in cache. Again, works for slim little iPods.

"Ops, the HDD just died, and all my files are lost..."

As opposed to flash memory, which can only be written to so many times? Both will fail eventually, no matter what. Files lost on ANY medium? Should have backed it up. That's common sense.

"Ops, the HDD just run down my battery while talking..."

Again, you need to learn about a magic thing called "cache."

"Ops, I wonder why my M8 with HDD weighs like an elephant..."

Have you ever picked up a 1.8" hard drive? Their weight is measured in ounces.

"Ops, just got fired by my boss cuz M8's HDD makes too much of nose while talking to him on the phone..."

Again, why would the hard drive be spinning while you were talking on the phone? Are you watching a movie while talking on the phone? Listening to MP3s while talking on the phone?

How about this - I'm using a device that's touted as a portable media player SLASH phone SLASH music player... it works awesome as a phone, but I can only put a handfull of videos and a handfull of songs on it before my tiny 4GB of space fills up.

The iPhone is great as a phone, but worthless for all of it's other features - not because of the features themselves, but because the features are limited by the space. I'm not the first person to say it. If Apple could implement a hard drive correctly, with a good amount of cache, they could keep the size down, and keep the battery life up.

[coolant8 @ Oct 19th 2007 4:05PM]

"Ops, accidental dropped my phone..."

Read the drive, park the armeture, and use cache. It works for the iPods.

for a certain amount of music at a time only, a ipod video can hold like 12.5 mins of 256kbs music, then it will spin up again, the chance are that drop a M8 with HDD at 1.5 metre, you end up with a dead HDD, drop a m8 with flash memory, your data will be safe. Cuz even if you drop a powered off 1.8 inch HDD, it's liklely to fail.

"Ops, my m8 just overheated cuz of the 160gb HDD..."

The HD only spins to put information in cache. Again, works for slim little iPods.

HDD generates much more heat than flash memory, especially if its continuous seeking, comparing an ipod classic with a ipod touch while using coverflow.

"Ops, the HDD just died, and all my files are lost..."

As opposed to flash memory, which can only be written to so many times? Both will fail eventually, no matter what. Files lost on ANY medium? Should have backed it up. That's common sense.

it's common sense but despite flash drive can only be written to so many times, you cannot that easily break it and lose your data, HDD are far more vulnerable to breakages caused by physical factor, which a mobile is subjected to far more than your average HDD spinning in a desktop. In actuality, its far more likely that you will break the HDD before it reach it's end.

"Ops, the HDD just run down my battery while talking..."

Again, you need to learn about a magic thing called "cache."

The caching can only cache so much data, the smaller it is, the more often the HDD spins up again, the larger, the more power hungry they are, you never know if M8 will include the caching feature that is anywhere nearly as efficient as ones in the ipod, which passed through generations and generations of improvements.

"Ops, I wonder why my M8 with HDD weighs like an elephant..."

Have you ever picked up a 1.8" hard drive? Their weight is measured in ounces.

Yes, when i broke my 5th gen ipod accidentally by dropping, i toke out the HDD, it's not light, as far as i can say.

"Ops, just got fired by my boss cuz M8's HDD makes too much of nose while talking to him on the phone..."

Again, why would the hard drive be spinning while you were talking on the phone? Are you watching a movie while talking on the phone? Listening to MP3s while talking on the phone?

yes, you heard the term 'multitasking'?

[coolant8 @ Oct 19th 2007 4:13PM]

I'm not insulting HDD, i just don't think its suitable to be tightly packed into a phone, iphone and m8 are all pretty much the first generation of multimedia player that includes the function of a phone that uses flash drive as the main source of storage as oppose to going back to HDD that has higher capacity, the storage provided by the flash drives are limited at the present, it will get bigger and cheaper.

[Randomness @ Oct 19th 2007 1:34PM]

I wonder if I beg enough they'll give me a security key so I can develop apps for it... what, I don't need to beg for it, there isn't one? I can keep my dignity and not kiss their CEO's ass every morning? wow... thats pretty original.

[Justin @ Oct 19th 2007 1:51PM]

Because being China's top grey market developer has been a lifelong dream of yours.

[ITsPennywise @ Oct 19th 2007 1:36PM]

How this is not copyright infringement, I will never know. I mean its a disgusting, blatant rip-off of almost everything iPhone and iPod touch. The one thing that makes me laugh, the keyboard. What the hell is that monstrosity supposed to replicate? A jacked up qwerty if I've ever seen one.

Shame on you Meizu!

[Taz @ Oct 19th 2007 1:38PM]

If they add a HDD to it (even a 60Gb one), add it so that I can browse my music by Album Artist, and ensure that it's network unlocked - I don't really care if it's a copy... I'll be in for one of those!

[waiownsyou @ Oct 19th 2007 1:44PM]

Oh big surprise. You know they were screwing around from the start when they did a mock-up of the iPhone interface using Windows Vista icons. Why screw one company and take their designs and copyrighted material when you can screw two? That's Meizu!

[Cesar Cardoso @ Oct 19th 2007 1:45PM]

Only to say "I love Google Translator"... not even in those marvellously crafted 419 scams I read stuff like "aluminum alloy side can cause gray, silver, black, etc.", lol

[waiownsyou @ Oct 19th 2007 1:46PM]

Oh and how the hell are they typing like an essay of Chinese characters with a QWERTY keyboard? What the hell, Meigayzu?

[Joseph Lin @ Oct 19th 2007 2:01PM]

Phonetics

[Jerry @ Oct 19th 2007 2:09PM]

check this out

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin

[nano @ Oct 19th 2007 1:48PM]

@Fatima: That'd be quite a feat for Russians to copy US spacecraft - they launched the first satellite, the first man in orbit, did the first spacewalk, first lunar lander and first Venus lander. Did they use time machine of some kind to copy US spacecraft before US even built it?

[Jordan Amdahl @ Oct 19th 2007 1:52PM]

Actually, we built the time machine too, but we went back in time with it, which allowed Russia to copy it in the present and to go back in time and copy our rockets before we had made them.

[UoMDeacon @ Oct 19th 2007 1:52PM]

Actually I think Fatima was referring to the Space Shuttle copy the Russians put together during the Cold War:
http://www.k26.com/buran/Info/A_Comparison/a_comparison.html

On topic, even the icons are direct copies on the Meizu. It's almost ballsy to just completely copy the UI, instead of at least coming up with new icons.

[MacVicta @ Oct 19th 2007 1:50PM]

It's been almost a year now and we're still left with computer simulated images?

These are not photographs of an interface running on an actual Meizu M8, they are renderings of what they hope that interface will be. That's why the handset's physical characteristics change with the wind, they can barely decide what they want it to look like! This is almost 10 months after they announced it.

Apple must have created a truly astounding product if it's taking them this long to get it down. I seriously thought, for a second there, that Meizu might get their product out the door before the iPhone even shipped! Now Apple may very well have the 2nd Generation iPhone and an expansion of the lineup (iPhone nano, etc.) on the market before Meizu finally stops playing games and releases their copycat product. That's incredible.

And after all this, it still won't have multi-touch.

[Standingfast @ Oct 19th 2007 1:58PM]

This phone keeps looking better and better. If this thing ends up being competitively priced, and if WinMo apps work on it, I'll gladly ditch my iphone and get the m8.

[t-bone @ Oct 19th 2007 1:58PM]

I saw the pictures first and thought the iPhone was getting skins. Then I read the headline. That's some pretty funny stuff.

[Kaminix @ Oct 19th 2007 2:01PM]

Looks like an improved version of the iPhone.
Can it play Ogg? I'll take two!

[MacVicta @ Oct 19th 2007 2:23PM]

An improved version of the iPhone? Have you actually bothered to look at the pictures?

For crying out loud, it's not even an actual QWERTY keyboard! They placed the I, O, P, K, and L keys at the very top row! I'd love to see how much of an improvement that is for you.

Not to mention flanking that same top row with the Caps Lock and Delete keys, making them harder to reach than on an iPhone.

They took pictures from the internet of the iPhone interface and altered them in a half-assed manner.

[Kaminix @ Oct 19th 2007 2:35PM]

I still think it'll be easy to get used to and that the final product will be much cooler than the iPhone.

[llren @ Oct 19th 2007 2:03PM]

Interestingly, US and European countries are not that different....

http://osdir.com/ml/culture.india.sarai.reader/2005-01/msg00198.html

How to stop worrying and learn to live with piracy
A US professor has rocked the current patent debate by saying that piracy is not

only inevitable, it may even be beneficial.
Doron S. Ben-Atar is hardly your usual suspect when it comes to
subversion. He is a genial giant from the world of academia, a
professor of history at Fordham University in New York who has written
or co-authored several books, a researcher who has won prestigious
fellowships. For all that, he has managed to undermine the
conventional arguments in today's hotly debated question of who owns
intellectual property (IP) - simply by looking at the issue through
the prism of the past.

Ben-Atar's contention is that all developed nations, especially the
US, did not respect IP rights and indulged in rampant piracy - and he
has detailed researches to prove this - during a certain period in
their history of industrialisation. Tracing the roots of patent and
copyright laws in early America, he says that during the country's
industrial revolution, its very prosperity was founded on copyright
infringement, industrial espionage and outright theft of IP.

to be continued......

[daedric @ Oct 19th 2007 2:23PM]

This is a good post, and something that I've been wondering also. Imagine how the world would turn out if people weren't allowed to use China's invention of the compass. Idiotic comments aside from idiot engadget writers, this device looks pretty nice, and now I can finally have something that will give the the codec support I want on a mobile device.

[Darnell @ Oct 19th 2007 2:05PM]

Well if no one else is going to say it... They should have kept it white.

[joe23521 @ Oct 19th 2007 2:20PM]

If this ain't vaporware, I don't know what is.

[Panathas17 @ Oct 19th 2007 2:32PM]

WTF??? This company is a knock-off based company... i mean if they could make their own designs and interfaces maybe people would actually buy from them... i would not be seen with one of these over my dead body.

[Panathas17 @ Oct 19th 2007 2:36PM]

P.S. and yes, i am an apple fanboy, if yr wondering

[Mark @ Oct 19th 2007 2:36PM]

You care too much of what people think of you.

[joe23521 @ Oct 19th 2007 2:41PM]

Their "MiniPlayer" is actually quite a nice product, according most reviewers/users. And it is not a knock-off. I wish I can say the same about this M8 thing.

[b_a_boone @ Oct 19th 2007 4:43PM]

-When one of you Apple fan boys points out one distinct thing that Apple developed themselves, manufactured themselves and put it in a 100% original casing. I will personally kiss your a$$.

-Don't forget that all of those Chines people your talking about tend to be the ones who manufacture 90% of the products you use including the iPod's we own.

-Every manufacture builds off of another's great ideals and mistakes and learns from them.

-Yes this phone resembles the iPhone but as much as I commend the Apple brand it's not what I want to use. If Apple created a wPhone wm6 I would be the first in line to say thanks and hand them my cash.

-If the rolls were reversed an Apple had a larger presence in the world all the issues that are found in the Windows based products would hit be Apples problems.

-Why would I try to make a quick buck developing some software for 10,000,000 when I can spend less time and make more money selling to 100,000,000 people.

[Panathas17 @ Oct 20th 2007 6:59AM]

@ b_a_boon

wateva... i dont think i can see myself reading what you wrote over my dead body...


APPLE 4 LIFE!!!

[Noor Tazudeen @ Oct 19th 2007 2:43PM]

nice

[nano @ Oct 19th 2007 2:52PM]

@UoMDeacon: Buran wasn't a knock off. For one thing, it could fly unmanned and land automatically - a feat that NASA can't pull off to this day. Second, it had substantially different shape, different engines, different booster rocket, different pretty much _everything_. It's as much of a Shuttle copy as Chevy SUV is a copy of a Ford SUV.

[UoMDeacon @ Oct 19th 2007 3:47PM]

Yes, the capabilities were different, considering it came after the original shuttle, but take a look at the shape and size and tell me that it wasn't "inspired" by the US version? I'm not saying it wasn't as good as the US version, I'm just saying you have to admit that it was too strikingly similar to have been designed independently.