Meizu's M8 UI promo video is surprisingly professional, catchy
By Ross Miller 
posted January 17th 2010 9:54AM
posted January 17th 2010 9:54AM
posted January 17th 2010 9:54AM
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@000000 We have been innovators for 5,000 years. The compass, gunpowder and paper were pioneered by us. Unfortunately, we seem to be stuck in rut for a bit here, but doubtless we'll back on track and contributing to the global community within this century or the next.
I'd get one if it wasnt a knock off of the iphone. If it were a knock off of anything else, that would be a different story.
@Jeff
So, you would buy a phone that you'd never seen before, that was a knock off of a phone yet to be determined?
Nice one Jeff. You won't be buying anything anyway
@pukerocket
Your post makes no sense.
I mean I would buy a Hero or a Pre knockoff. Not an iPhone. It wasn't that hard to understand.
@Jeff
Your post made no sense. You said you would "get one if it wasnt a knock off of the iphone. My point was it wouldn't be the same phone, so you were claiming you would buy some mystery device that you'd never seen, when we all know you wouldn't anyway.
Why would you buy a Pre knock off? Just buy the original,
@pukerocket
Ok fine, if it means that much to you, you're right. I wouldn't get one anyway.
What I am saying is that if the M8 (aka the phone that Meizu touting as their premier device) was a knock off of the Hero or Pre or any other phone except the iPhone I might get one.
Honestly, it does everything the iPhone does and more and yet it does it for cheaper. The only problem I see here is that if Meizu can do it for this price, why can't Apple, Palm, HTC and the others do it? My feeling is that they do manufacture them for the same price, but sell it to us at a much larger profit margin than Meizu would.
If someone took a Ford Fiesta, stuck a Dodge HEMI engine in it and gave it GM's OnStar all for $5000 dollars, wouldn't YOU buy it?
@teodude The others can't do it at this price, because they're spending money on developing their own UIs. If one artist does a painting and then I copy it, of course I'll be able to charge less for mine. I didn't have to spend time coming up with the idea and going to iterations to make it better.
@teodude
They don't have Apple's R+D costs
They don't have Apple's marketing costs
The M8 isn't a premium product.
Apple is a brand name.
Well done on your conclusion that Apple make larger profits!
@Tes
I'd say that the weather bit looked more like HTC's TouchFlo 3D interface.
love the Palm Pre moment :58 seconds in!
iphone sucks, this sucks,
you sucks !
That phone looks so...familiar.
Eh.... I'm probably just imagining things.
All those features!!! WOW!! Wonder if it also ships with Snake? Used to play that all day long on my Nokia back in the day.
Depsite it's KIRF roots I think the M8's OS has matured into one that shares many of the common features and aesthtics of all modern phone OS's yet does have some original features/functions too if you look deeper into it.
Personally nowadays I think it looks as much like the IPhones OS as Samsungs new Bada platfrom or Palm WebOS or Android.
Meizu's main issue is software bugs. Their OS at this time still lacks a considerable amount of refinement with bugs being abundant in all recent incarnations of it's Firmwares.
Many international users also face probelms with using some of the features/functions of the M8 outside China as it is not tested or sold outside China. Evidently it has no support from large western companies in terms of applications also. In addition we are not likely to see a 3G verison for 6 monthes +.
However.....Meizu's hardware is solid and the M8's sound quality can rival and even eclipse many high end handsets on the market. They just lack the infrastructure or inlcination to compete in other markets other than china.
LOL
Vista/7 3D Flip icon, OSX System Preferences icons at 2:12
GarageBand icon at 2:15 :D
catchy video?????????
memorable tune??????
i can't believe you actually wrote that
It's like a cheap-poor copy of the iPhone and HTS's UI... Plus the ad seems like it was made in flash :S WTH.. They even used Leopard icons! I spotted the Garage Band icon and the Sync icon... lol
actually...it DOES look similar to the LG Prada...now that you mention it.
i'm going to have to say, to an extent all slate based phones look similar. Does have apple aspects, home button....some UI elements look sort of similar...
i think the overall design is better than the iphone though, it doesnt have that horrific taper to the shell and it doesnt have a chincey chrome bezel...could benefit from some soft touch on the back though.
i would buy an android device like this if it were to run quickly (1ghz +) and function decently
Can say whatever you want about Meizu. I own both an M6 and an iPod Nano 3gen. While the Apple definitely has the UI down pat (they've been doing for a damn long time) at the end of the day I'd still rather listen to stuff on my M6 because it's audio quality is far superior.
The M8 looks nice and I had been following it for a while. If this had come out two years ago when it was originally targeted to release it'd have made a decent competitor to iPhone. But I fear it's too little too late for Meizu now that Android's on the scene. I've used iPhone's, Blackberry's, and even had hands on with the Palm Pre. And you know what, I would NEVER ever trade my HTC Droid Eris for those phones. When I get rid of my Eris it will be for another Android phone.
I'll never understand why anyone would want a smart phone that doesn't have the developer support of either Apple, Android or even WinMo.
@Bhima
Because they are cheaper than some dumb phone. They are around $300 and have a huge gallery of codec support.
meizu calling now....ba bada badum bad badum bada...meizu calling now...NOW my life is complete!
Take the best bits of the best smart phones there are, shake them up and what do you get ? You get a Meizu M8. Possibly the best phone the world will surely never see.
Outside China if this was made the lawyers would have a field day. Still good luck to them!
Meizu: Now with more exploding phones!
FYI: Meizu is actually developing a dual OS boot at start-up, its gonna be the Windows CE-based Meizu OS & the Stock Android. A current fan developed dual boot solution exists but it'd be great to see a official one as well.
Also, there are ton of emulators out there for this device. I can see every Chinese fella flocking to this phone ! :P Although, the Meizu's story has been as extraordinary one, from KIRF to this !
Why would anyone prefer this to a Droid an Hero, an HD2 or even an iPhone?
To have a chance they should sell this thing at(or near) 50% of the competition's prices, which they don't.
I'm gonna stick to my HD2 and my Hero (until I can grab a Nexus One or maybe a Milestone) unless Meizu can give me some compelling reason to prefer their stuff.
C'm on Meizu, come up with some , I'll be waiting.
@Shokz
I meant the background the phone is on, not the phone display itself.
Wow. This may be the ultimate KIRF, and I don't mean this in a positive manner.
This thing rips off the iPhone (general hardware design/UI elements), Android (the pull down menu) and the Palm Pre (the default background image).
How can any company feel good about themselves knowing they put all their effort into completely ripping off others? I don't get it.
@Scape3d
"How can any company feel good about themselves knowing they put all their effort into completely ripping off others? I don't get it."
Seems to work for Microsoft.
My next phone.
Yea right.
There's no evidence this phone will ever show up with North American 3G bands, especially since the video has a Chinese demographic target. Perhaps Meizu won't be like every other phone manufacturer out there and limit the phone to Europe or Asia (HTC, I'm talking about you), but with a huge potential customer base in China, why would they even bother putting 1700 or even the more elusive 850/1900 bands on it?
SING WITH ME AND HAVE SOME FUN TOGETHER !
What?
No clownfish?
So they just mod'd the iphone OS
I was in China recently, and I must say, it is really highly regarded there. A whole bunch of tech-savvy Chinese teens/adults I met there were dreaming of getting an M8 of their very own. It wasn't even like "I want an iPhone, but I'll settle for a Meizu. No no. They straight up wanted a Meizu. Meizu is actually a really "aspiration" brand there. Eat your heart out, Sony.
This is really unimpressive to me. And if there's anything we've learned from demo videos (like the n97's), it's that the end product is very far from what is presented in the video.
It is amazing that in this day and age people with acces to the internet still manage to talk so much missinformed drivel.
This phone is not sold oficially outside of China, only exported by small retailers. Hence there is support from hardly any developers outside China or large companies making applications for main stream platforms like android or apple.
This phone does not have 3G, why would you possibly compare it to high end smartphones from huge corporations like HTC or apple? It is a previous generation product running an ARM11 cpu which is only available in China, of course it cannot compete with an iphone or nexus one.
Considering Meizu's size and budgets it is a pretty large achievement to have created a new Ui based on Win CE 6.0 completely from scratch. Considering the R&D budgets of companies like Palm, Apple and HTC, Meizu have done pretty damn well to come up with a device of this standard IMHO.
Because I feel sorry for you clowns I will also drop some more knowledge on you...
The UI has been completely designed by Eico Design
http://www.eicodesign.com/
They have a huge number of high profile clients including Creative, Asus, Lenovo & Google. They are a very well respected design company.
There is no doubt Meizu has KIRF roots but I can tell you that KIRF companies do not pay companies like Eico large sums of money to design their UI's for them.
The M8 has many short comings but at the same time represents a big step forward for meizu as a company and they have achieved a great deal in a very short space of time.
Despite this it is unlikely they will however never be able to shake the KIRF moniker amongst western observers (as many of these comments show).
A good Kirf is still a Kirf, deserves no respect.
Hey, instead of just running actual Android, let's make our own rip off of EVERYTHING.
i think ill just buy one of these bad boys and drop android on its brain...
@Tes "Hi, we're apple, google, microsoft, palm. and Meizu 8 was our idea!"
Nice KIRF indeed.
and it support FLAC !
@ljm
Hey, it does something incredibly original!
It plays APE!!!!.........:D
WOWWW beautiful ad!
slightly destroyed by the explosion and "e_mail" lol
was the video tmnt ? did any one see it