Meizu’s Vice President, Li Nan, has just indirectly confirmed that Meizu plans to introduce a Snapdragon-powered flagship by the end of this year. This news follows a rumor that surfaced a couple of days ago which claimed that the company’s flagship with a curved display will launch in Q3 this year, and that it will be fueled by one of Qualcomm’s SoCs, quite probably the Snapdragon 835.
That being said, Meizu’s VP confirmed that a Snapdragon-powered Meizu-branded smartphone is coming by the end of the year via a response to a question on Weibo, China’s social network. A user asked when will Meizu launch such a high-end smartphone, aiming at the Snapdragon 835, it seems, and Meizu’s VP gave him a rather indirect answer. Mr. Nan said that it takes an average of 8 months of R&D (Research and Development) for a new smartphone to come to life, plus its production, certification, and some additional steps which are necessary before the phone reaches the market. So, if you take into consideration that Meizu and Qualcomm signed a licensing agreement back in December, after Qualcomm sued Meizu, it is possible that we’ll get such a smartphone in Q3 or Q4 this year. So, as you can see, Meizu’s VP did not exactly confirm anything just yet, but he did hit that a device might be announced by the end of this year, and the closer we get to that, the more info we’ll be able to obtain.
Meizu is expected to introduce the Meizu PRO 7 sooner than that, however, the company will probably announce their new flagship in April, and chances are it will be fueled by the Helio X30 64-bit deca-core processor. We are only guessing at this point considering we did not see any proper leaks for quite some time now. The Meizu PRO 6 launched in April, so if Meizu aims to stick to their release schedule, its successor will land soon as well. That being said, the Meizu PRO 7 is expected to sport a somewhat different design than its predecessor, and it will ship with Meizu’s Android-based Flyme OS, though we still don’t know which version of Android to expect. It is not that likely that Meizu plans to introduce Snapdragon-powered mid-range smartphones, however, as MediaTek’s SoCs are more affordable, and plenty powerful for the company’s budget offerings. That’s only an educated guess, though, we’ll see what will happen.