Meizu discusses miniOne at CeBIT: US and Europe launches expected

By Thomas Ricker | March 17, 2007

Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Audio, Portable Video

No, they didn’t have the miniOne on display here at CeBIT, not even a plastic mockup. Apparently, there is only one and it’s back in the office with CEO, Jack Wong. Still, that didn’t stop us from hounding the folks at Meizu for details about their flagship (i)phone offering. After some initial reluctance to discuss the product, we learned that Meizu is planning a miniOne release for the European and North American markets. But wait, there’s a catch: it won’t be a phone. According to Mrs. Wong and designer Mr. Young Su, Cho, the miniOne will break from China as an audio/video player, only — no date was given, we asked… repeatedly. This miniOne “entrance” model (which will likely be called something else once the English is cleaned up) will lack a camera and cost $195 for the 4GB model and $305 for the 8GB version. So the $285 and $400 price tags we heard about will come affixed to the 4GB and 8GB miniOne “standard” media playin’ phone. It also sports an integrated 2 megapixel camera and TD-SCDMA coupled with tri-band GSM/GPRS (no EDGE). Media on both devices will likely be protected by Windows Media DRM10 and feature the same codec support as their other devices. Meizu also confirmed that the miniOne will absolutely, positively play video at 30fps at the device’s full 720 x 480 screen resolution. That’s the plan, but anything can happen between now and the “end of 2007″ launch in China, eh Jackson?