When Meizu came out with the design of the famous/infamous Meizu M8/miniOne it was way way obvious that it had taken A LOT of its design ideas from the Apple iPhone. Ok. So that was putting it mildly. Everyone called the miniOne an iPhone copycat/rip-off/clone.

Despite the assertions of Meizu CEO, J. Wong, that the original design of the miniOne, then called the M8, was already out even before MacWorld came out with the sensational iPhone it is still clear that copying happened. After all the miniOne’s design still underwent plenty of changes AFTER the iPhone came out not just in the color but in so many things until it almost looked like the iPhone’s long lost brother. To make it a little different from the iPhone (which everyone thinks is an obvious attempt to escaoe litigation from Apple) Meizu then came up with new renderings of the minOne showing a slightly different screen/interface and some minor hardware design changes. The new renderings looked even better than the first one but even then it STILL looked too much like the iPhone to escape being labelled a rip off.

The crazy thing about the miniOne is that even its critics have to agree that it IS more than an iPhone look alike. In fact when it comes to features and specs miniOne can definitely hold its own. Some of its features are:

4 to 16GB of internal storage
533MHz ARM11 core from Samsung
128MB of DDR RAM
VGA front
3 megapixel rear cams
Bluetooth
WiFi
DMB mobile television
Integrated GPS
Windows Mobile 6 package
720 x 480 display

So whether the miniOne is a copycat or not Meizu fans will surely flock to buy this one as soon as it comes out…if it gets past Apple’s lawyers