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It’s been some time when we last heard about Meizu and their famous iPhone clone - M8 MiniOne. Now, apparently the Chinese company is finally moving towards launching its device. According to posts by the company’s CEO Jack Wong, the first Meizu devices will start selling within a month. Initial basic version will come with 128MB of memory and an unspecified amount of permanent memory. A second version, with 256MB of memory and 8GB of flash storage, will reportedly ship in October for a price equal to $320.

It’s still not clear whether Meizu will take its baby outside of China. Something tells us they may be more cautions this time, after their booth has been shut down by police during this year’s CeBIT.

As always, our eyes and ears are on the street. We keep watching and bringing you all the bits of information that seem interesting…

[Via: Electronista]

While the rest of the world waits for the next-generation iPhone to get real, it seems that Apple-copying Meizu is still working on their near-mythical Meizu M8 handset. The newest update to the still not launched handset gives the touchscreen UI a bit more flair.

With icon animations and familiar UI, the Meizu M8 could very well prove to be a hit. The UI design changes are reportedly the work of eico design, and features sparkling animations and LED-like indicators for missed calls and messages.

Of course, seeing as how Meizu CEO Jack Wong hasn’t yet gotten his more-hype-than-substance handset to market, we could just be looking at some enthusiastic mock-ups that may or may not ever materialize. By the time this thing launches, it’ll be a couple years behind the competition and likely phased out through multiple news-cycles.

[Via: MeizuMe]

Remember this year’s CeBIT and shutting down of Meizu’s booth? Apparently that has nothing to do with Apple — the Chinese company hasn’t paid a dime for the MP3 licence usage.

But today I don’t wanna talk about that. Rather I want to point out that Meizu has tweaked the M8’s UI a bit to further differentiate themselves from a “certain iPhone.” I’m not sure they’ve succeeded, or to put it in other words I’m not sure they wanted to succeed. More screenshots follow after the jump and you be the judge whether this reminds you on Apple’s work or not.

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Meizu’s (as well as a few other booths) booth at CeBIT 2008 in Germany was raided by police and required to leave the showroom floor and remove almost all of their booth display materials. According to local newspaper Heise, cops announced Wednesday morning that the Meizu booth was shutdown over copyright issues regarding part of its product portfolio.

Now, we all know that Meizu and their Meizu M8 miniOne has been a major draw for copyright/trademark wit, so many assumed that the booth raid and subsequent shutdown was the result of copyright issues regarding the Meizu M8 miniOne and the Apple iPhone. Well, it turns out that the Meizu M8 miniOne was not the copyright offender, rather, licensing issues surrounding one of Meizu’s portable music players (which also looks a lot like Apple’s offerings in that market) was the reason for the booth raid.

So, Meizu is now back on the CeBIT showroom floor and has their booth back in order - including a display model of the Meizu M8 miniOne. However, the music player has been taken down from the booth’s displays.

Is this a win for Meizu? The company’s seeming legal right to carry on with their Meizu M8 miniOne is interesting indeed. Perhaps that Chinese patent carries some weight.

[Via: Electronista]

Ahh, the almost mythical Chinese rip-off of the iPhone. We’ve been seeing prototype mock-ups and renderings of the Meizu M8 miniOne ever since the iPhone launched, but we’ve yet to get our hands on one. The problem? There just isn’t a finished version of the Meizu M8 iPhone clone in the wild.

The closest we’ve come to actually seeing the Meizu M8 in the wild is Engadget Mobile’s recent coverage from CeBIT 2008. We missed Meizu at CES 2008 in Las Vegas, but Engadget Mobile spotted a Meizu M8 prototype hanging out at Meizu’s booth and had to good sense to recordify the barely working demo unit. The trademark-flouting Meizu team was passing around a prototype handset that did little more than splash a few interface screens - a strictly “for show” prototype with decidedly “no go.”

Meizu did manage to demonstrate some of the Meizu M8 interface, but it was only up and running on an engineering reference board. These guys have had a lot of time to bring their handset into reality, you’d think they’d be past the reference board stage.

Now, we just wait for Meizu to get their affairs in order and bring the Meizu M8 miniOne to market. And then we wait for Apple’s legal team to have a field-day.

[Via: Engadget Mobile]

File this under “yeah, right” but apparently the world’s most known iPhone clone will sport three, instead of a single button. According to the image above which is said to be the back of Meizu’s latest prototype, the M8 may distance itself from Apple’s handset. And while we’ve now idea how will this reflect in the final device design, a Meizu fan made that rendering in the corner of the image giving us a hint what could Chinese manufacturer do with three buttons.

Finally, it’s fair to say we welcome Meizu’s changes and are also hoping they will be tweaking their interface even more so they don’t get slammed by Apple’s legal department. We’ll see…

[Via: Engadget Mobile]

CES is certainly the place to be. Yes, we’ll be sending our team there as well. And guess who’s also going to attend? Meizu - the folks behind the world’s most famous iPhone clone, MiniOne M8.

Now I could go on and on about the “right thing to do” and whether this is a “smart move” or not on behalf of Chinese manufacturer. But, Engadget has put it quite simply — it’s much better to keep this thing (MiniOne M8) as the China-only project. Yap, you’ll be more than safe with those Chinese “flexible” intellectual property laws. Otherwise, I can easily envision Jobs unleashing its lawyers to the Chinese “bozos.” We’ll see where this goes. It DOES sound fun.

Almost a month ago, we’ve showed you the first screenshots of the most famous iPhone clone - Meizu MiniOne M8. And now we have even more of those. Actually, this time we have media player screenshots, as opposed to messages interface we got last time. Somehow it’s obvious to think Apple’s lawyers are rejoicing. But then again, as we see ripoff devices being released on an almost daily basis, I guess it’s not that easy to pursue your copyrights in the “world’s fastest growing economy.” Anyway, more screenshots are available on Engadget Mobile, or on your iPhone…

Roughly a week ago, we spotted first screenshots of the Meizu’s MiniOne M8 user interface. As you’re about to see, the screenshots looks kinda familiar. Forget that, they look so iPhone-ish that I’m sure Apple’s lawyers are rejoicing as we speak for the additional cash they’re about to make. Truth to be said, there are some differences, but most of them are so minor that this will most likely be one of the Apple’s cleanest cases. I just don’t understand Meizu where they think this leads…

Make sure to check more images on Engadget.

What you just saw is one of the first real snapshots of the upcoming Meizu M8 phone. There are three photos in the series, and while all of them look not-that-real, we want to believe. Yeah, it’s the iPhone-clone and we guess Apple’s lawyers will have a fun time dealing with Meizu folks, but we must admit them — the M8 really looks great! It’s nothing like all the other cheap iPhone ripoffs we’ve seen — the Meizu’s device actually looks like an extensive amount of time was invested in it. And honestly, I wouldn’t mind trying one…

Two more photos after the jump.

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