In a matter of months, Canonical and its partners have managed to push three Ubuntu phones onto the market, with the latest being from the Chinese company, Meizu. Canonical said today that the Meizu MX4 Ubuntu Edition will launch in Europe on June 25 for 299 euro. However, the phone will only be available through invites accessed through the Meizu site for those who are interested in getting one. The device had already been launched in China for developers on May 17.
Although the Meizu MX4 Ubuntu Edition is technically the third commercially available Ubuntu phone, it might become the first to actually get people excited about Ubuntu. Meizu is a more recognized brand name that makes mid-range priced phones that "look" and feel like higher-end smartphones.
The device comes with an octa-core Mediatek SoC with two quad-core 1.7 GHz Cortex-A7 and quad-core 2.2 GHz Cortex-A17 CPU clusters, along with a PowerVR G6200. Both the CPU and GPU are customized by Meizu, according to the company's website.
The phone has a 5.36" screen with 1080p resolution and Gorilla Glass 3 protection, 2 GB of LPDDR3 RAM, 16 GB of storage, 3,100 mAh battery, and support for Bluetooth 4.0, GPS and GLONASS, dual-band 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi, and LTE.
One of the premier features for the Meizu MX4 Ubuntu Edition is its 20 MP camera (Sony's 1/2.3" IMX 220 sensor) with a 5-element lens, Gorilla Glass 3 protection for the lens, 0.3s fast auto-focus, and support for 30 photos per second (at 10MP resolution).
The camera can also do 2x2 pixel binning for improving the pictures and videos taken in lower-light conditions. The phone also has a dual-temperature (5500K and 2200K) flash. It uses an algorithm to determine the optimum combination of the two colors in order to take a more natural picture, even at night.
The camera can also shoot 4K videos at 30 fps that can be encoded with the next-generation HEVC codec to reduce the file size by half.
The Meizu MX4 Ubuntu Edition seems to be quite feature-packed for the 299 euro price point, which could make it a quite compelling offering for those who were waiting on a better phone with Ubuntu.
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