A small M8 education for those losing faith.

sere83

well....In 4 monthes 3G, GPS and 32gb certainly will not be standard on all phones at all. I predict that not that many will actually have 32gb flash as mico sd cards and sony m2 micro cards currently are only available up to 8gb and this is the memory most phones use. By summer there will be 16gb cards but there probably won't even be a 32gb micro sd or sony m2 micro card available. The majority of manufcturers are not including on board flash.

Only high end handsets are likely to have all these options anyway and will be very expensive offline. Why should the M8 have all these options anyway? Most of Nokia's (the biggest phone manafacturer in the world) sales come from basic low end handsets, why does the M8 have to be in the very top category? It will still be a strong media focussed phone even if it does not have all the features available on high end handsets. No one seems to acknowledge the fact that this phone is mainly aimed at those intrested in playing back media, how do you think meizu got it's name? why does it have all this codec support, tv-out blah blah blah....because it is a media orientated device.

As gkai mentioned having a high res 720x480 screen makes a huge difference. It means you can view webpages fuller and it will be much much sharper than a vga screen so pictures & video will be much easier on the eye. It will especially make a huge difference for video as the screen will be quite small so the more crisp and sharp it is the more detail it retains and the better the viwing experience. Also, combined with a powerful processor popular internet movies and series formats like XVID and RMVB will be able to be played without converting, simply drag and drop. If you have a 32 gb ipod touch you can fit 16 500mb movies on it. A 16gb m8 will fit 8. But lets not forget the M8 has USB HOST and OTG meaning you can carry more if you have a memory stick (32gb sticks are now under £100 here in the uk), so whether the phone has 32gb or not is not really a problem.

midsommer

well: time will tell, if I am correct with my expectation.
But: as far as the rumors are correct: the iPhone 2 will have the same Processor the M8 will have, and for sure aGPS. But you are right: we will see.

In four month (and if the promotions on Cebit + CES will hold) there will be more competitors (LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, etc.) with front camara, aGPS, 3G, and expansion slot! 5 mega pixel are up to date, 3.2 Mp are standard (all with at least LED flashes) for new phones, etc. Even if the big brands will delay by two month: They will be on market before the m8 with a comparable feature list!

And even more: I will not spend 220 € for the small m8 - I would spend it for the big one - so I will have to wait until december!!! Thats a delay of 2.5 years. And only idiots buy a phone in december (X-mas and Barcelona fair in February - ever noticed the price drop after this fair?).

I agree on: 32GB internal storage will be enough for long - but only as ALL the other (exept apple) offer expansion slots - we speak about the 300 + € price segment (thats more than 450 $)! Got it?

IMHO: we all have waited for the the m8 roughly 2 years then. There will be no argument left in december to buy it simply by technique or price (if not lower than 250 €). In december no one will take a note on a chinese company offering a "clone" of an out-dated iPhone. Not when androids has started!

P.S.: my iPod Touch 32 GB is a perfect PDF reader - the screen is very good - thats the reason why I blame Meizu so much for wasting the efford for the high resolution! The ebook thing is no argument - really not. I have very good eyes and nither I nor my friends can see one single pixels on the iPhone/iPod Touch sceen.
Bringing now the argument: on 720x480 screens you see webpages fuller is nonsence as the screen is too small! Try it on the iPhone - it is not unsharp, the fonts are just too small! 720x480 pixels on 3.3"- be serious. Compare it with your monitor. Most pages are optimized to 1024x786 on 19". Simply guess what that means for a 2.5 mm letter.

SteveMB93

You can't even get a 16GB micro SD card for a decent price. Most phones with expandable memory have a micro-SD slot, although there are a FEW with regular SD. Can you tell me which phone has a resolution of 640x480, so I may compare it? The iPhone has a resolution of 480x320. The Meizu will have a resolution of 720x480. That's a pretty big difference. Why do you think that Apple would update the CPU to be the same as the M8 in the iPhone 2? What I am curious about is the other competitors that will be coming out. Will they be as cheap or cheaper than the M8? Will they have a nice screen, and a nice CPU? Will they be unlocked?

gkai

Maybe you have a perfect far vision, and you never look at your screen from closer than 50 cm...
Im a slightly myopic (so not perfect vision from far away, but very crisp below 2 meters.)
At 30 cm, I can barely see individual pixel on my current PDA...which have a VGA 3.5 inches screen! At 20 cm, I can definitely see them, and 20 cm is a comfortable viewing distance for me.
So the DPI of the m8 will not be lost, I can assure you. As I told, I have used daily QVGA and VGA 3.5'' screens, so here I feel perfectly able to give a fully backed-up opinion, not some vague preference...
QVGA is simply not enough for my kind of usage, I need higher resolution.
I have seen HWVGA 3-3.5'' screens too (480x320, the iPhone resolution), on iphone and multiple Palm devices (Tungsten T5, livedrive,...). They are just OK for me, not great but OK. More than adequate for movie, not crisp enough for text of static images at my closest comfortable viewing distance.
As I said, I am slightly myopic, so I may be more sensistive to "not-high-enough DPI" than average...However, there is no way than young people, which are not yet suffering from presbitism (is it the correct english word? I mean that can not focus on very near objects, an almost universal condition when you get older (the typical glasses for reading newspaper, or old people looking at their newspaper with arm straight....), make no difference between a HVGA and VGA screen if it is 3-3.5 inches.

BTW,1024x786 on 19'' is a very crude monitor imho. I had a colleague using a Dell replacement desktop notebook with 17'' 1920X1200 screen. It was very fine, but usable. In fact, they even do 15 '' 1920x1200 screen*, which maybe over the top but that shows there is demand for high DPI.
In fact, now that I think of it, high DPI screens are often found in business line for laptops, while consumer often go with lower res glossy screens that look good when watching DVD movies but suck when you edit documents or code...

* to spare you with computation, the 15'' 1920x1200 screen has about the same DPI as an iPhone screen....but for smaller screens, i look closer, so a higher DPI has sense...
I do not think m8 resolution has big advantage compared to VGA...but they choose a WVGA form factor, which is more adapted to new HD shootings, which are widescreen.

midsommer

We speak about the release date in December - not now! There you definitelly find a 32GB microSDHC! And: I use my phone longer then 1 year. It would be idiotic not to include the capability to use such cards.

And iPhone 2 is said to use the same processor - but these are still rumors. But why should they not use a mass product?

Finally: the price of 450 $ for the small m8 is too high! The iPhone will again drop in price after July - belive me (iPhone 2!). Of course: worse screen, but the iPhone screen is fantastic (if the same as the iPod Touch one)! I would not pay more money for the 720x480 resolution. If you would, do it. I can only speak for me. And btw: the SE Xeperia 1 will most likely be out September with 800 x 480. for a price tag of about 900$ In December mostlikely it will be at 700 $. But even then it offer more then the _big_ m8 (aGPs, full office suit, expansion slot, etc.), which price is still unknown and most likely be around 550 - 600 $ (100 to 150 $ more then the small one).

P.S.: in December (end of 2008) the _big_ version of the m8 (front cam, 16 GB) will come - the pricing will be? Well - most likely 550 - 650 $. In such a catagory you will find tons of better phones! Just see the CES anouncements!
Do not speak about FREE phones, jailbreak or debrand them. You can not speak about warranty for the m8 - as long as you do not come from china.

midsommer

I respect your point, and as you said: the iPhone screen is OK. I am fully happy with it, and am not willing to spend 100 $ only for a higher resolution - that is of course only my oppinion.

my computations: I was speaking about what webpages are optimized for. This is now: 1024 width on a 19" screen. For such a resolution most people design their webpages. Of course it will look nicer on higher resolutions. But face the fact: meizu (maybe) have been out since the start of this year (as the resolution seems to be the problem). And most people would have been happy! (Ever noticed, that most people do not even notice the dead pixels on their iPhone as they are so small?).

P.S.: most movies are downloadable now for the iPhone resolution - so the m8 will have to scale it! This will drain the battery. And: the m8 8GB would only be able to keep one DVD (4.2GB) movie - I will definitelly use the shrunken iPhone optimized one (500 GB). btw: that speaks against your wide screen HD argument, too. You will not be able to use it, as you run out of storage. or you are willing to overwrite your unremovable storage many times - so the storage will be out of order soon (the only reason why flashes are said to hold longer now, is mostlikly due to the OS file system avoing rewriting cicles as much as possible. But if you have always to use allways the full space, the flash will be gone within 1000 write cycles (ok - that will be 2 years, but not guaranty).

gkai

We agree, VGA+ screen is not a wisest choice for a flash-based media player with a small screen (in fact the norm is now WQVGA, so the iPhone WHVGA seems very good for this purpose).

For PDA-like tasks, though, it is very nice.

I though about another fact, which can explain why meizu opted for such a high resolution: their main target is the chinese market, and for chinese characters, I guess high-res screen are an even bigger selling point than for roman ones. For exemple, in japan, people have high-res clamshell phones since a very long time...It may be related to the comfort they bring while writing sms and browsing the web almost exclusively in kanji. If your intentended market consist in people using lot of non-roman fonts and more sensititve to calligraphy than western peoples, I guess the screen resolution is a much bigger selling point ;-)


BTW your point on flash cycle is good, but if I buy a m8, I do not intent to use the onbord flash for storing movies, I would use flash usb keys for that. Onboard mem would be for applications, ebooks, GPS maps, offline wikipedia, and such...
USB key memory is really cheap, and almost disposable, so if M8 have USB2 OTG and can read USB keys at good speed, it would be perfect...

midsommer

Two very good points! Thanks for that.

The chinese characters might indeed be a reason for the high res. screen - I tend to forget the market meizu aims at... But this does not help me at all.

The USB-stuff seems a good point! I even could use the PS3 for encoding. But: as far as I know, the m8 will only have a mini usb connector. I am not willing to carry an adaptor cable with me only for the USB-flash... if they use a USB2-OTG - why not implementing the standard _big_ in/output?

darkado

you could use 700mb hd rips that look great, if you like watching movies. the adaptor doesn't need to be the cable, heres also litle plastic thingies to put on usb drives to convert to mini usb. i personaly don't intend to use m8 for movies, i have a psp with 4.5" screen and i like watching good ol' divx on it, it's about 400-500 mb per movie and it looks great.

sere83

The M8 will not have to down scale anything, this is the whole point. Because the screen res will be so high (720x480) the screen will be optimised to properly handle any mpeg 4 file up to this resolution. In other words it will be optimized to handle 720x480 without a problem so anything lower will be less taxing on the processor. This means that no file up to dvd res will have to be down scaled at all. You could encode your videos at any resolution 320x240/640x480/720x480 and the M8 will be able to play them back sharper and with more clarity than any other phone on the market. Also by the time you have written 1000 cycles you will almost certainly have a new phone anyway!

The Sony Xperia offline will be very expensive when compared the M8, it has other features like 3G and GPS but it will also be more than twice the price! To put a micro sd 16gb card in it will also cost a lot more too as they have not even been released yet. You are looking at around $800 at very least at release and the price will not fall very quickly either. In september 16gb micro sd will probably not be standard in any phones. The M8 will also have other features like USB-OTG/codec support and a bigger screen that the sony ericsson will not have. In September there will be very few (if any) phones that can offer the kind of spec meizu will be offering for the price. There may be better specd phones out by then but they will also cost a lot more money. I am not sure but I think the 8 and 16gb M8's will release at the same time too.