Look out, Steve Jobs' nightmare is hunting iPhones

Jan 30, 2007 16:21 GMT  ·  By

iPhone had us all taken on the wave created by the Steve Jobs keynote. No surprise there. Now, the Chinese have unveiled their own version of the iPhone with a more Apple-ish white colored body and, from what the released specs tell us, a better version of the iPhone.

Apple's communication device cloned by the Chinese you say? No surprise here either because everybody was waiting for it to happen. And who do you think did it? Our old acquaintance Meizu, the exact same company that cloned the iPod and released it on the market under the name of M6 miniPlayer.

Oops, they did it again and one more time, they managed to pull it off big time. Their approach on the iPhone seems to have a better spec sheet and it just looks more Apple than the thing Apple has released at CES.

The Meizu M8 features a 3.3 inch touchscreen display working at a resolution of 720x480 pixels with a user interface cloned after the iPhone one, a 3 megapixel digital camera capable of recording videos at 30 fps (1 megapixel bonus from Meizu compared to the iPhone), the 3G connectivity not yet available on the iPhone, an ARM11 CPU, wireless Bluetooth connectivity and TV Out.

As the rumors also tell us, the device will probably get to run a Microsoft Windows CE 6.0, Wi-Fi and DMB capability. This gives a certain twist to the whole thing because I'm sure no one has thought the iPhone will ever run a Microsoft operating system.

If all these rumors come true and if this handset isn't just the work of an overactive Meizu fan's imagination (the irony of it all :) ), we'll be probably able to buy the GSM/TD enabled M8 this year and make all the iPhone users ashamed of throwing their money out the window.

Don't throw rocks at me yet and condemn my blasphemous behavior towards Apple because there is a reason that made me turn my back on the electronics manufacturing "fruit" company. I know the purpose of businesses is to make money and this was the reason behind using the parts that made them end up gaining as much profit as possible (50% of the price according to some calculations) but they could have put in at least 3G, a more serious camera and a true wide-screen display and not lie to us in the face.

They did do a great job on the interface and I have to give them credit for that (they managed to revolutionize the way we think about cellphone OSs) but it would have been very easy for them to make it an even better handset if they would have put their minds to it. I am not in anyway encouraging anybody to clone other handsets and release them as their own but Meizu has just proven the iPhone could have been much better if Apple would have wanted it and that is exactly what I wanted to say when I started writing this article.

The conclusion to all these? Bad Apple! Bad!

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