Jack Wong is a very lucky guy. Or you can say he’s very unfortunate. On one hand, his eight-year-old Meizu label — literally meaning “the captivating tribe” — has rapidly become one of the most popular brands amongst Chinese gadget lovers, yet all he’s producing right now is just the one phone: the M9. On the other hand, the now-discontinued M8 had notoriously caught unwanted attention from Apple, and even the recent M9 launch saw accusations of Meizu hiring people to stand in line. But the latter points are irrelevant for now — what we’re really interested in is how a teensy MP3 player factory managed to outpace its numerous competitors to become a reputable smartphone maker with a huge fan base. To help us understand what drives the company, we decided to pay Meizu a visit. Go on, you know where to click.
You like numbers? Good, because it’s the season and amid all these lovely financial reports we’ve been hitting there are some broader trends to look at. IDC has released its mobile phone report for 2010 and has concluded that, worldwide, the industry grew 18.5 percent over 2009, shipping a massive 1.39 billion units. That’s nice and all, but check out this bit about ZTE. The manufacturer boosted its annual shipments by 94 percent, stealing Apple’s recently-won fourth place position globally and, in doing so, knocking RIM straight into the dreaded “others” category. Can RIM make it back? Will Apple recover? Will Siobhan and Lucky ever reconcile their differences? Tune in next quarter to find out.
Oh yes. After all the unbearable teasing since we unveiled the first ever photos of the PlayStation Phone, we’ve finally managed to get hold of the real deal for an in-depth preview. Honestly, we couldn’t wait any longer with this thing floating around in China; we’d otherwise have to wait until MWC, where we expect the phone to be launched as the “Xperia Play” (and we shall refer to this name henceforth). Before you pop the cork for us, do bear in mind that what we’re seeing here is subject to changes, so don’t be alarmed by any missing features or exposed cables in our preview. When you’re ready, head right past the break to find out what Sony Ericsson’s cooking up.
Yes, it’s the Dell Venue, and no, you still can’t buy one outside Hong Kong or South Korea just yet. All we can speculate is that this Android phone is facing the same manufacturing issues as its WP7 cousin, but hopefully we’re wrong. Anyhow, what matters is that we’ve finally gotten our hands on a retail unit of the Snapdragon-packing Venue. So is it worth the wait for Androiders distanced from the Far East? And will this handset be the answer for our love-hate relationship with the Streak? Head on right past the break to find out.
Oh, there’s no need to act like you’re surprised, fellow Brits. As promised, HTC’s going to dish out its latest budget Froyo Android and flagship WP7 slider to the UK next month. Just a quick recap: the “pearl white” Gratia — which is the international version of the Aria — sports a humble 600MHz processor, along with a 3.2-inch 480 x 320 LCD and a 5 megapixel camera with VGA camcorder. As for the 7 Pro, it packs the bog standard WP7 specs (1GHz Snapdragon, 8GB storage, and 5 megapixel camera with 720p recording), as well as a slide-and-tilt 3.6-inch 800 x 480 display that reveals a landscape QWERTY keyboard underneath — the tilting part still a first for WP7. Sadly, it doesn’t look like any carriers have picked up either handset yet, nor has HTC shed light on their standalone costs, but hey, patience is priceless.
As you might have heard a little while back, Windows Phone 7 is the latest smartphone OS to have joined the SlingPlayer gang, meaning WP7 fanatics like Ballmer can be couch potatoes wherever they are. Well, assuming they have data connectivity — be it 3G or WiFi — and some battery juice on their phones. For better or for worse, the latest SlingPlayer Mobile app is very much like its other flavors — same easy preparation, a familiar interface, and a similarly tear-inducing $30 price tag. There is, however, one nice addition: a new “Zoom” button on the menu page, which actually chops away a good portion of the black border around the picture. Another noteworthy difference is the more stylish interface in comparison to the Android and iOS versions, but of course, some might think otherwise.
Also on the menu page is a “Quality” button for toggling between standard video quality and high video quality. Annoyingly, said switch is always set to standard at every launch. We can’t help but to think that this is for covering up the app’s shortfall — we noticed while high quality streaming does indeed have good picture quality, the frequency of buffering increased over time. Similarly, response time to our button and gesture inputs also got longer and longer — at one point it took about 20 seconds for us to change a channel on our Freeview box, and that’s with our HTC 7 Mozart sitting on the same network as our Slingbox Pro HD! Needless to say, it took even longer over 3G. We then double-checked using our iPhone and Nexus One but failed to reproduce the same bugs. Thankfully, a simple restart of the app eased our frustration, but we expect Sling Media to actually deliver a fix soon. Anyhow, there’s a video walkthrough after the break while you wait for the update.
This is a pretty bizarre video, but we watched the whole thing and we’re prepared to comment: this is a pretty bizarre video. The folks at GlobalDirectParts somehow got ahold of iPhone replacement parts (a common story in Apple device leaks), and they’ve posted an in-depth video that illustrates the differences between this new set and regular iPhone 4 parts. Interestingly, nothing has been majorly tweaked, but there’s a huge quantity of minor tweaks, primary in the internal wiring. Most notable are antenna adjustments, that are either an antenna fix, or, more likely, adjustments to optimize the antennas to work with Verizon’s CDMA network. Other tweaks are bigger head scratchers, including a SIM slot (which wouldn’t be necessary on Verizon, but wouldn’t hurt anything either), and the removal of the rear camera hole (perhaps an extra SKU for enterprise use?). GlobalDirectParts isn’t the only one to receive the tweaked parts, SmartPhone Medic made a similar score, so at least we know this isn’t a one-off prank. We’ll keep scratching our heads while you check out the video, located after the break.
Update: So apparently Apple’s yanked the video off YouTube, which may or may not be an indication for the part’s authenticity. Anyhow, we’ve got you guys a backup video after the break.
Pretty impressive, isn’t it? Meizu sure has made a wise decision to launch its M9 Android Froyo phone on the first day of 2011 which, like most other countries, happens to be a public holiday in China. According to some Meizu fans (aka “Mei-yo” or literally “friends of Meizu”) outside one of the two Shenzhen stores, there were already about 60 people lined up outside at around 6am. A few of them even braved the cold weather since 8pm last night, despite CEO Jack Wong actively discouraging such hustle on the forum for the sake of people’s health, promising “all the flagship stores will have sufficient stock” for all pre-orderers. Meizu wasn’t keen on giving us an official number, but the two Shenzhen stores alone could’ve easily served several thousand customers this morning. With no limit on how many units each person could pre-order (¥2,499 / $379 for 8GB, and ¥2,699 / $409 for 16GB), you can imagine Meizu’s assembly lines working long hours to supply its stores from 28 other provinces in China. Meanwhile, somewhere out there, Mr. Wong is happily checking his bank account. Video after the break.
Ah, so you’ve just been given a Windows Phone 7 handset. If that’s what you’d been begging for all this time, then many congratulations; but if not, don’t hit eBay just yet — sure, WP7′s range of apps is comparatively limited with its recent 5,000 milestone, but hey, you gotta start somewhere, right? Even at its infancy, WP7 has proven to be a nice alternative choice if you want to stand out from the rest of the smartphone crowd, and don’t forget its two powerful weapons: Zune and Xbox Live integration. Until WP7 gets its major upgrade early next year, our holiday guide should keep you and your new phone going for a little longer. Go ahead and read on.
Isn’t it fun when you hit the right place at the right time? We just happened to be chillaxing in Hong Kong when Dell chose the city for the Venue’s global launch (and it’s actually hitting the shops slightly ahead of South Korea), so a quick hands-on is inevitable. As we’ve seen previously, this HK$3,999 (US$514) handset is essentially the Venue Pro’s Android 2.2 cousin, sporting the same curved (or “Shear Design”) vibrant AMOLED display at 4.1 inches and 800 x 480, but missing the slide-out keyboard. Under the hood lies a 1GHz Snapdragon with 1GB ROM and 512MB RAM, along with the usual microSD expansion, 1400mAh battery, 8 megapixel AF camera with LED flash, Bluetooth 2.3 EDR, WiFi and AGPS.
There aren’t any surprises in terms of software — the Venue shares the same snappy Stage UI and Swype keyboard with the Streak, except for the lack of landscape orientation for the homescreen (and that’s with orientation enabled in system settings). As for hardware, the killer feature here is the screen, and we found its curved Gorilla Glass to be surprisingly nice for our thumbs while swiping across it. The AMOLED panel underneath is also vibrant with great viewing angles. Elsewhere, build quality is almost solid bar the squeaky battery door, but at least it provides some grip. That’s all we got for now — we’ll delve into more details in our forthcoming review, so stay tuned.
