Geely-owned Meizu 20 and Meizu FlymeAuto leak ahead of debut

19 January 2023

After a recent reshuffle, Geely become the sole owner of Meizu, the once major smartphone maker, that has struggled in the past few years and disappeared from the map. Now that it has some serious backing again the company is preparing to launch its latest Meizu 20 smartphone and we get a first glimpse of it through a leaked photo.

A blurry video turned up on Chinese social media showing off the upcoming Meizu 20 and the updated smart cockpit solution called FlymeAuto. The blogger who posted the video claims it was taken on the Meizu 20 phone. We see a person testing the FlymeAuto on a larger screen with the Meizu 20 connected.

It seems this is a verification stage where an engineer goes through all the functions of both the system and the phone and simply is making sure that everything works as it should. From the video FlymeAuto looks fast and responsive and the connection between the phone and the large screen appears to be flawless.

The phone itself clearly has a large flat screen, but it's encased in a design-concealing box to prevent leaks such as this one from telling us too much. The phone is supposed to launch in the spring and it has already been given the CQC approval (China Quality Certification), its battery received the 3C certification which revealed its capacity as 4,600 mAh. According to that certification, the Meizu 20 supports 80W charging which is quite a step up from Meizu 18 and its 36W.

Back to FlymeAuto. The new system is the follow-up of the existing Flyme solution and it continues the “Alive Design” concept introduced by Meizu. The idea is fairly straightforward - seamless connection and communication between multiple devices to provide a unified experience. Not so simple to execute. Fragmentation of our digital world means constant issues and often abysmal experience - cue current VW entertainment system, which the company claims has been already revised. We’ll wait and see.

Geely’s interest in Meizu makes a lot of sense. While Volvo, Polestar, and Smart lean towards Android solutions, the company has a huge portfolio of vehicles in the Chinese market where Google's services aren't functioning properly. Taking charge of a well established phone company gives Geely a lot of expertise when it comes to development and implementation of fluid software.

For Meizu to make financial sense to Geely, all it has to do is sell enough phones to offset the costs of the in-car smart cockpit development. That way Geely ends up with a (hopefully) great system and great experience for its customers at zero cost. And if Meizu turns a profit - even better. We can expect to see a car-centric phone from Meizu or possibly a new sub-brand, if Geely takes a page from Nio’s book of ideas. Will we see Volvo and Polestar branded phones in near future?

Source (Chinese)