Last month, Canonical and Meizu announced the most advanced Ubuntu smartphone yet with the Meizu MX4 "Ubuntu Edition." The device was only available through invitations, but now everyone within the EU borders can purchase it for only 299 euro. The Meizu MX4 is the third commercially available Ubuntu phone, and although it's not as powerful as the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S6, it comes with relatively good specs for less than half the price of other flagships.
The device has a Mediatek MT6595 chip (customized by Meizu) with an octa-core CPU formed by a quad-core Cortex-A7 CPU cluster for low-power tasks and a higher-end quad-core Cortex-A17 cluster for high-performance tasks.
The Cortex-A17 is ARM's highest-end 32-bit CPU core at the moment, meant to replace the Cortex-A15 for companies that don't want to switch to the 64-bit Cortex-A53 or Cortex-A57 for their cheaper product lineups yet.
The GPU being used in the SoC is Imagination's PowerVR G6200, which is a lower-end GPU by today's standards, with about half the performance of the PowerVR G6430 in the iPhone 5S. However, it comes with support for the latest OpenGL ES 3.1 version, so it's not an obsolete GPU in terms of API support.
The Meizu MX4 Ubuntu Edition also has a 5.36" screen with a 1080p resolution and Gorilla Glass 3 protection, 2 GB of LPDDR3 RAM, 16 GB of storage, a 3,100 mAh battery, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, GLONASS, dual-band 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi, and LTE.
The device uses a 20MP Sony IMX220 sensor with a 5-element lens and Gorilla Glass 3 anti-scratching protection, a 0.3s fast auto-focus, and support for 30 fps burst mode at 10MP resolution. The camera also comes with a dual-LED flash that helps it take pictures with more natural colors even in low-light environments. It shoots 4k video at 30 fps with HEVC encoding as well.
Right now, the Meizu MX4 is about as good as Ubuntu fans are going to get in terms of smartphone hardware. The camera seems to be the premier feature of the device, and on paper it should be roughly as good as the cameras on the high-end Sony flagships that cost twice as much. Anyone living in the EU and interested in a higher-end Ubuntu phone can snag one from Meizu's store.
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