New M8 Interface

DusL · 03-09-2008

If i'm not seeing a live video of this soon, than i'm concluding that those are entirely new plans and that they haven't gone past the sketching-fase with this.

I really don't understand this overhaul: why not make it this way in the first place? It looked like the old GUI was at least complete with the prototype at CeBIT. Two steps forward, one step back.....

sere83 · 03-09-2008

The reason for this change is very simple. J.Wong is well aware of the fact that a lesser known Chinese company making a phone that looks very similar to a hugely popular western product will be percieved negatively by the west and seen as a cloner or knock off brand. He has stated in other posts that he believes that if this phone is to be well recieved by the west they must make it appear less like the iphone. This is why they have implemented these changes. I think he is right. At the end of the day aesthetics is everything to 80% of western consumers. Look at the success the ipod has had despite it's average sound quality and poor file format support (although this is also largely due to apple's astronomical advertising budgets and trendy image). At the first sign of any iphone similarity there is always a team of apple c**k suckers shouting iclone! I also don't think this will add that much extra time to the development phase as it is basically only the graphics that need changing. The page transitions and coding will probably only require a few slight tweaks to accomodate the different positioning of certain graphics and links.

nice2know_u · 03-09-2008

It's more like one step forward, two steps back :D Kidding.

JW said they won't change the home screen layout, because it's good that way. These are the standby and menu structure pictures.

DusL · 03-09-2008

That's exactly my point, why make it like a iPhone GUI ripoff in the first place?? If people won't accept it, then why are you wasting time by making a first GUI that won't be accepted??

Wong's masterful conclusion is correct, but that is something I could have concluded myself in 10 minutes??

They sure didn't do any effort in the last 14 months not getting the iClone name stamped on. Them "seeing the light" is kinda questional behaviour if you ask me.

Wong always manages to justify their actions while it doesn't make sense at all if you're looking at the bigger picture. Wouldn't want to run a company like that :P All that delay is killing your position in the market. I mean, where are they making money on atm?? March 2008 in technoland is not a time anymore in which the M3/M6 excells in a certain point or something. I would have (and have done so) bought the m6 last year March, but I wouldn't do the same thing right now.

sere83 · 03-09-2008

I do agree to an extent but at the same time we have to remember a few things. There is no doubt that the M8 has taken far too long. Of this we can be sure. However I think this was mainly due to unforeseen technical problems/ necessary changes which meant delays and attempts to try and keep up with the fast moving market as a result. They simply underestimated how big a task it would be to make a high end touchscreen covergence device such as the iphone. After all this is their first ever phone and they are unbelievably small and inexperienced as compared to other companies that make these high end types of devices, using similar componenets.

We also must remember that the Chinese market (the m6 and m3's primary market) is so huge (plus their limited distrubution in the west and other places) that they can probably sustain themseves by only selling a couple of player models.

In addition, the quality of Meizu devices obliterates a huge percentage of other Chinese dap makers products. Also people always forget the M8 has been made primarily for the Chinese market. For a start the iphone is not even ofically distributed there and many people cannot even afford many off the end phones we get here.

Whatever happens the M8 will sell in China by the thousands and possibly even millions as we are talking about a market of over a Billion people! It is a common misconception that many Chinese do not own cell phones. This is rubbish, this is the land where they make 90% of the worlds cell phones. A very large percentage of Chinese people own a cell phone.

I also think that Wong may have been slightly naive about how the phone would be recieved in the west with reagrds to it's similarity to the Iphone. Lets remember that Meizu is quite a young company. It seems Mr Wong has only started to really pay attention to the western market in the last couple of years. Lets face it most Chinese campanies have such a huge domestic market that the west is not even a consideration of theirs. Designing and manafacturing quality devices is very different skill to being business savvy.

hotboxx · 03-09-2008

Serious now, IMO it is a good idea to forget the iPhone cloning thing. HTC did it also with their Touch and is now extremely popular.

Hendrik · 03-09-2008

new ideas? Thats Windows Mobile 6 or 6.1 if we are lucky.

nice2know_u · 03-09-2008

I'm sorry, but if he does anything like these pictures with the interface, I'm not buying it...that's just ugly.

Standby screen gonna look ok with a nice background

Just something I put together:

Sammy · 03-09-2008

thats nice ^^

roelandb · 03-09-2008

just a question to nice2know_u, is there actually going to be 3 round buttons (like in your picture) or is it going to be a single button?(i meant with 3 buttons, but in one piece)