First Quad-Core A9 Exynos Smartphone Launched in China

Meizu, a Chinese electronics manufacturer, has been rather busy in recent months, releasing a wave of smartphones ranging from the M9 (in late 2011) to the MX (a Flyme OS-based device on 1 January), across China.

The most recent, announced on 16 April, is the Meizu MX quad-core smartphone, which should be available in June. Interestingly, this will be the world's first smartphone to be powered by the Samsung's Exynos A9 quad-core processor. The reportedly power-efficient processor will include the 32nm High-K Metal Gate (HKMG) technology. It is reported the chip has been designed to reduce power consumption by up to 20 percent. The power source for the smartphone will be a 1700mAh battery.

Of course this is not the only phone which will sport the Exynos quad-core chip and according to the Korea Times, Samsung will be using it in the Galaxy S2's successor, since, it is looking to reduce its dependence on Qualcomm in producing chips for high-end devices. The new processor, with the model number 4412, will reportedly have a top-ten clock speed of 1.5GHz which will include four ARM Mali graphics cores. The point is that it was expected the Exynos A9 chip would make its first appearance in the Samsung Galaxy S3. However, Meizu seems to have stolen a march on the South Korean giant.

The smartphone's quad-core CPU is expected to be 60 percent faster than its predecessor (the GPU 50 percent). The device will have a High-Definition ASV Display with a resolution of 292 pixels per inch and a rear-facing Back Illuminated Sensor (BSI) camera of eight megapixels with f/2.2 lens aperture. The BSI sensor reportedly uses a novel arrangement of the imaging elements in order to increase the amount of light captured and improve low-light performance and the aperture offers brighter photos, even if it is taken in dark light.

Meanwhile, the MX quad-core device will run on its own Flyme OS, which is based on Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and claims to offer equally smooth performance.

The quad-core smartphones will be available at Meizu's 400 retail stores from June onwards and will be sold at 2,999 Yuan (£299.96) and 3,999 Yuan (£399.98) for the 32GB and the 64GB models respectively.

There are no plans to launch the phone anywhere else in the world, for the moment.