When a Chinese smartphone maker sends an invitation with the chassis of another manufacturer’s phone, you know that something unoriginal is in store for you. Well, that’s just what happened with the invites to the Meizu M1 Note in China where invitations included a shell from the iPhone 5c. As expected, the new and unsurprisingly affordable phone came in the exact same color variants.
Of course, the Meizu M1 Note is more than just a simple copycat. For one thing, its screen is significantly larger than the iPhone 5c’s at 5.5 inches. It also has Full HD resolution and uses an IGZO panel protected by Gorilla Glass 3. Underneath the hood is MediaTek’s 1.7GHz MT6752 Cortex-A53 octa-core processor, 2GB RAM and a choice between 16GB and 32GB storage variants. And did I mention its support for LTE bands?
For now, the M1 Note is only available for pre-orders, with the official Chinese launch coming on December 30. The Western market will receive it in the latter half of January, although there’s no news if local importers like Novo7 Tech or Kimstore will get their hands on it by then as well. If you’re interested in grabbing one for yourself, the 16GB variant is 999 Chinese yuan (about Php7k) while the 32GB variant sells for (Php8.3k). Of course, expect that pricing to go up a little bit if it ever does get here.
