An unannounced full-screen smartphone bearing the Meizu brand and the model number ‘m1712’ was recently leaked in a series of hands-on photos, indicating that the Chinese OEM is working on implementing this new design philosophy into at least one of its upcoming devices. The smartphone seen in these latest photos presents thin bezels and rounded display corners, and interestingly enough it seems to accommodate a side-mounted fingerprint scanner, not unlike some of Sony Mobile’s Xperia smartphones or the new flagship from Razer.
It’s worth reminding that, according to a previous rumor, the first Meizu full-screen smartphone bears the codename ‘Ocean’ and should be powered by a Qualcomm-made chipset. These characteristics have not been confirmed by this recent leak; however the full-screen design with rounded corners and an elongated 18:9 aspect ratio is evident. The back panel is relatively clean and doesn’t make use of any eccentric features like the Meizu PRO 7’s secondary display, and instead, it only seems to accommodate a single camera module coupled with an LED Flash. As for the fingerprint sensor, Meizu had previously embedded this technology into the physical front-facing home button, but by adopting a full-screen design this is no longer possible and Meizu’s solution appears to consist in relocating the sensor to one of the smartphone’s edges. Although not an entirely new take on the fingerprint sensor placement, this is arguably a valid solution for OEMs who are working with full-screen designs and want to keep the back panels clean for various reasons. In fact, some users are of the opinion that this solution is superior to rear sensor placement in general.
Lastly, the mysterious Meizu m1712 seems to be running Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box with what appears to be the Flyme 6 user interface on top, however, since the first full-screen Meizu smartphone will not be announced until next year (according to Meizu’s exec), there is a possibility that the OS or at least some aspects of the software might change by the time the m1712 debuts. The Chinese OEM is expected to enter the full-screen market in the first half of 2017, and some rumors predict that its first flagship to adopt this particular design language will be priced at under 3,000 Yuan, or the rough equivalent of $455.
