Meizu’s marketing team is either enjoying all the exposure these leaks are giving them or pulling their hair out in frustration, as yet another photo of the 5-inch Meizu m1 mini surfaces.
What do we have here? A photo of the 4.7-inch Xiaomi Redmi alongside a Meizu device, but which Meizu phone is it? Looking at the evidence, it cannot be the Meizu MX4 or MX4 Pro, as neither of those phones comes with a blue body, and the MX4 Pro has that distinctive fingerprint scanner.
The plastic body could mean it is a Meizu m1 note, but we know the note has a 5.5-inch display, which would make it much larger than the Xiaomi Redmi. What about the Meizu MX3, then? No: the phone on the right cannot be the older generation Meizu, as the volume buttons are all wrong.
That leaves just one possibility. This is another (purported) spy photo of a complete Meizu m1 mini, the second such leak today!
In this photo we get a really good idea of the size of the new Meizu, which is widely believed to have a 5-inch (or possibly 4.7-inch) display. As we can see, Meizu has managed to work its design magic once again and create a phone with a decent screen size in a small form factor!
It is only five days until the Meizu Connected launch, so keep checking back for all the latest Meizu news.
Why the Redmi was the perfect yardstick
Choosing a Xiaomi Redmi as the comparison phone was not an accident, whoever took the photo. In early 2015 the Redmi line was the phone every Chinese budget handset was measured against. Xiaomi had built its reputation on selling well specified phones at very low prices, mostly online, and the Redmi with its 4.7-inch 720p screen was one of its biggest sellers. Xiaomi was also preparing its follow-up, the Redmi 2, for the same young, price-conscious buyers.
Meizu’s new M series was aimed squarely at that market. The m1 note, announced in December 2014, had already shown that Meizu could offer a big, sharp screen and a strong camera for much less than its MX flagships. The m1 mini was expected to do the same for people who wanted something smaller and cheaper. Putting it next to a Redmi was, in effect, a preview of the fight to come.
Reading a spy photo like a detective
This leak is a good example of how phone fans worked out what they were looking at, using nothing but the details in a single image:
- Color. A blue body ruled out Meizu’s flagships. The MX4, for example, was sold in grey, champagne gold and white variants, with black or white fronts, never in bright blue.
- Features. No fingerprint scanner on the front ruled out the MX4 Pro.
- Size. Standing next to a known 4.7-inch phone, the Meizu was clearly far smaller than the 5.5-inch m1 note.
- Buttons. The position of the volume keys did not match the MX3, launched in October 2013.
By a process of elimination, the only phone left was the one nobody had officially seen yet.
It is worth noting what the photo could not tell anyone. It said nothing reliable about the processor, the camera or the price, and the screen size could only be estimated. Those details had to wait for benchmark listings and the launch itself. A spy photo is excellent evidence about shape, size and design, and weak evidence about almost everything inside. Fans who kept that distinction in mind were rarely surprised on launch day; those who read too much into a blurry picture often were.
What happened next
The detective work was right. At the Connected launch on January 28, 2015, Meizu unveiled the phone as the Meizu m1, without the “mini” suffix, priced at 699 Yuan. Our launch report has the full details, but the key points confirm what this photo suggested:
- The screen was 5.0 inches, settling the “5-inch or 4.7-inch” debate, with a 1280 x 768 resolution.
- The body was a colorful polycarbonate unibody, offered in blue, green, yellow, white, pink and a peppermint blue, which explains the blue phone in the photo.
- It measured 140.2 x 72.1 x 8.9 mm and weighed just 128 grams, compact for a 5-inch phone of the time.
- Inside was a quad-core, 64-bit MediaTek MT6732 with LTE, a 13 megapixel rear camera and a 5 megapixel front camera.
The m1 went on sale in China in early February. It was quickly followed by a 2 GB RAM version, and later that year by the M2 and M2 Note, which added a physical home button and a faster octa-core chip. The budget war with Xiaomi that this photo previewed would shape both companies for years.
For the other leak that surfaced the same day, see the first real photos of a working Meizu m1 mini.
Why it still matters
A decade later, the details that made this photo convincing are the same ones worth checking when you see a leak today: color options, button layout, missing or present features, and size against a phone you already know. Marketing renders can be faked in minutes, but a real phone in a real hand, next to a real rival, is much harder to fake.
There is also a buying lesson. The m1 showed that a well-designed 5-inch phone could feel small and light without giving up much screen. If you prefer a compact phone today, look at the dimensions and weight, not just the screen size, and compare them against a phone you have used. A few millimeters and grams make more difference in the hand than any spec sheet suggests.
