Meizu MX4 Pro Launches With 32-Bit Exynos 5430 Processor, Secure Fingerprint Scanning

Today, Meizu announced an upgraded model of its Meizu MX4 called the Meizu MX4 Pro; like the MX4, the Pro version also runs Android 4.4 KitKat with the company’s Flyme OS customizations on top. The phone has a slightly larger screen at 5.5” that represents 76.5 percent of the phone’s body, which results in rather slim bezels. The resolution has also seen an upgrade from 1920 x 1152 to 2560 x 1536 with the Pro version, jumping from a pixel density of 418 ppi to 546 ppi.

The Meizu MX4 Pro replaces the 32-bit big.LITTLE processor from Mediatek with another big.LITTLE processor from Samsung, the Exynos 5430. We saw the Exynos 5430 before, when it went inside the Galaxy Alpha. It’s Samsung’s first 20nm processor, but unfortunately it's stuck on the ARMv7 architecture, unlike the 5433/Exynos 7 Octa, which uses ARMv8 cores.

The processor should still be quite fast, but the lack of ARMv8 features will impede the ability to enable fast hardware accelerated encryption once the Meizu MX4 Pro gets the Lollipop upgrade.

The device will also get an upgrade in RAM, to 3GB of LPDDR3 RAM, and it will come with three storage options of 16 GB, 32 GB and 64 GB. The phone will also have a 20.7 MP Sony camera with an f/2.2 aperture, 5 MP wide-angle selfie camera, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Hi-Fi audio and a 3,350mAh battery.

One of the Meizu MX4 Pro’s unique features is a fingerprint scanning technology that the company designed in-house mTouch, which seems to rival even Apple’s TouchID. The phone has a home button, just like the iPhones, covered by sapphire glass. Once you put your finger on the button, the fingerprint is scanned with a resolution of 508 ppi, and the feature code of the fingerprint is encrypted and stored in hardware.The whole scanning takes less than 0.5 seconds, which seems relatively fast for fingerprint technologies.

There’s no word on availability of the device so far, but the phone should come in gray, sand yellow and white.

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Lucian Armasu
Lucian Armasu is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He covers software news and the issues surrounding privacy and security.