English Review up @ Engadget

Hong Kong is technically part of china. and there are Meizu Shops in Hong Kong, i checked their website... although they need to get the 'where to buy' section up and running on the english version of the website. it says updating but its been updating for months now!

The site is indeed based in Hong Kong and -cynical as I am- I think the review was done a) to drive traffic to the website, b) gauge the interest in possibly selling the phone in the future, and c) an ego massage for being the first English-language video review. Quite honestly, the reviewer is an excellent salesperson and runs a nice little profitable webshop, but any time spent reading/watching reviews there will amply demonstrate that technical details and/or accuracy aren't exactly the highest priority when getting new info out. Rushed inaccuracies aside, I would like to see a follow-up review detailing precisely why the A/V performance was lacking. The reviewer seems to think Meizu has some huge shoes to fill based on their previous efforts, but since when has Meizu been so highly regarded for video reproduction in their players?

BTW, I mostly agree with sere83's assessment above with the exception of Meizu "playing catch-up in the domestic market.." Meizu is still well ahead of other domestic manufacturers in technology, features, and most of all, price. Warts and all, the M8 is still an unbeatable value in China.

this review is not objective because this guy is a seller and i'm sure he didn't use the phone more than 3 weeks, i have the phone since more than a month and i can tell you that he miss to show a lot of things that you can show even if you have a restriction of 11 minutes in youtube,he said the m8 is not unique after saying "i'm never seen a better interface".IMO just this sentence prove that the m8 is unique,if my english wasn't bad,i would do a complete review for all of us or a video to show the advantages/defaults of the phone.I think the video support is good enought,ok it's not HD but you have a complete divx/xvid support and it can be better with a firmware upgrade(i mean maybe later we will be able to see videos with a subtitle file separately).
The audio quality is very good,the m8 have very good PMP functions(don't forget that it's a phone) that the reviewer sells cheap iphone clone that can't do anything better than the m8 can do.

Originally Posted by chengdude

I mostly agree with sere83's assessment above with the exception of Meizu "playing catch-up in the domestic market.." Meizu is still well ahead of other domestic manufacturers in technology, features, and most of all, price. Warts and all, the M8 is still an unbeatable value in China.

That sums up the situation at the moment. We might be forgetting how the value of the m8 compared to other phones of a similar caliber might be unmatched in the world.for a touch screen, a very decent camera, internet access and no need of unlocking; for 2380 RMB; the m8 is VERY good value

I do agree that the M8 is a decent phone, and a steal, considering that many good Sony Ericssons are in or above this price range.

But...

The firmware is still quite buggy, and some features as important as phone calls and SMS aren't handled as well as a older cell phone. At this point, I don't really think the M8 is really worth 2380RMB.

Also, one of the "tips & tricks" was to restart the phone at least once every day for better performance. I don't really want my phone to have to be maintained as constantly as my desktop/laptop computers.

Originally Posted by Rabsi1

That sums up the situation at the moment. We might be forgetting how the value of the m8 compared to other phones of a similar caliber might be unmatched in the world.for a touch screen, a very decent camera, internet access and no need of unlocking; for 2380 RMB; the m8 is VERY good value

I did not really make myself clear, I phrased that completely wrong. When I say catch up in the domestic market I mean because the western/korean/japenese market is moving ahead, it being china, obviously all these phones are available domestically (on the grey market) hence can be bought be anyone in China. However price wise they will be more expensive than domestic products. Officially however I agree that in terms of value for money and features in China the M8 will be hard to beat. I'm pretty sure there are no dometic manufacturers putting out any products that can rival it.

However, as I mentioned before as a western customer and with iphone offers like the one mentioned before and M8 price bumps for importing, the M8 unfortunately is becoming less and less desirable for me (despite my long standing interest in it). The thing is with 3G accessing information is so easy and such an incredibly useful function. Not to mention the iphones browser is one of the best on any phone available.

I have always been drawn to more obscure devices and never really wanted to get an iphone due to it's common nature and restrictions. However at this stage in it's devleopment the M8 is simply not solid enough in my mind and the draw off having internet access anywhere, without the need for a contract has overtaken my need for better file supprt and dap/pmp functionality that the M8 could provide. I had never considered 3G an option as I did not want a contract but unlimited 3G data access and no monthly fees has really made me re-think about getting an iphone (when I can afford it).

I definitely think the M8 will improve considerably though with updates, and I really hope they put out a 3G version now that China is adopting the standard too. However by that time that happens chances are we will have 3ghz super phones wih full HD support.

Again, agree.

With other domestic manufacturers dying a slow death, Meizu does have a golden opportunity in China...even against a company like Lenovo, which doesn't even own their mobile manufacturing business anymore. Meizu has one distinct advantage over foreign competitors (price) and another distinct advantage over their crippled domestic competitors (quality). They also have one big disadvantage that we are all painfully aware of: speed to market. If they're going to make a go of this whole transformation and play with the big boys, they need to seriously up the glacial pace they've been moving at for the last couple of years. Supposedly there's a news conference set for later this month; I'm not sure if it's intentionally or coincidentally timed to the dates of Mobile World Congress, but either way if Meizu doesn't have some very interesting news up its sleeve, simply announcing the availability of the M8 is going to look awfully quaint compared to what's going to be unleashed at MWC.

Nah, i think they are just going to have a photo op, pat yourself on the back kind of a thing, would be really surprising if they announced anything bigger than that... as i said in another post, holding a launch event at the sidelines of the mobile world congress is pretty lame.

Now you get one wondering what this new news could be other than announcing the availability of the M8! I hate to start rumors, but the only concievably logical BIG item could be the launch of the 16GB version - because they can't really 'launch' an international version of the M8 just yet ('cause the support network is not present) and anything related to fw 1.0 would be just a given (expected) so won't illicit any major hoopla.

Given the level of changes they have made in the past two fws they would have to have been holding back something big from the fw to make it a 'major' item. version 0.9.0.1 simply seemed to be something that was thrown together without testing - vis-a-vis the calendar sync option and backup tool, etc., IMHO.

I am hoping personally that someone was busy over CNY at thier home computer sowing up a nice new fw for us.

yeah, I can't imagine Meizu would be announcing anything apart from the official release of the phone. It really shows though how little interest meizu have in the international market at this time by putting it on at the same time as the MWC.

I'm really suprised engadget posted that story. Some dubious seller supposedly selling an M8 is hardly news worthy IMO.