Engadget is reporting that German authorities have shut down the Meizu booth at CeBIT on concerns of piracy. These concerns stemmed from the Meizu M8, which is undoubtedly an iPhone rip off- from the form factor down to the little nuances of the touch interface.

Update: Readers are pointing out that the reason for the shut down is because of MP3 codec licensing issues. The same thing SanDisk had a problem with last year. My apologies for miss reporting this. However, I still stand my my strong words of Meizu being a thief of intellectual property.

As you know, I am by no means a fan of the iPhone, but I really have no tolerance for this kind of obvious piracy. It saddens me that companies like Meizu try to steal and profit from other peoples hard work, ideas, and innovation. It is blatant theft and dishonestly. Shame on you Meizu.

In support of intellectual property rights and creativity, I would much rather see someone buy an iPhone than a Meizu M8.

The Meizu M8 Mini One is as close to iPhone you can get from a decent company without actually buying the real thing. The M8 wasn't represented at CES, so hopes were high for CeBIT which is going on as we speak.

The "prototype" (if you can call it that) that the people at Engadget got to play with was rather disappointing, since it was only a screen showing 3 different pics nothing more. Meizu claims the hardware is complete, and that what remains is the software part. Icons and UI are more or less final and will most likely be what the phone will launch with in China in August. Spec sheet after the jump.

[ Engadget ]

Meizu's upcoming miniOne/M8 may bear an uncanny resemblance to the iPhone, but its feature set just got a lot less phone-y. Turns out that when the device hits North America and Europe (after the "end of 2007" China release, of course), it will have shed all of its phone capabilities.

That's right. What we're looking at, then, is really just a pair of 4GB and 8GB PMPs that will play 30fps videos that fill up the entire 720 x 480 screen and have a 2-megapixel camera option (previous reports pegged the digicam at 3 megapixels). Since earlier reported prices haven't changed, we're guessing that the Meizu miniOne sans phone has yet to be priced.

[Engadget]

We're not sure when a CEO heading to a forum to make an official announcement became standard practice, but apparently Meizu CEO J. Wong does it all the time. On what was presumably his most recent visit, Mr. Wong posted pricing information on the suprisingly very real and upcoming M8 (also known as the miniOne).

The 4GB and 8GB iPhone-looking players/phones will be available with and without the 3-megapixel camera for the following prices: $195 (4GB without camera), $310 (4GB with camera), $285 (8GB without camera), and $400 (8GB with camera). We're still a bit hesitant to completely get rid of the "rumor" label this thing has been wearing since the summer, but the info is coming from the CEO. And we hobnob with B. Gates and S. Jobs in forums often enough to be able to spot the unequivocal truth when we see it.

[MeizuMe via CrunchGear]

Way back in August, there was some speculation about a new Meizu player dubbed the M8 that supposedly ran a version of the Windows CE operating system on a 533MHz ARM11 processor. But when the rumor didn't pick up any speed after that, we shelved it.

But now, five months later, guess who's back. This time sporting a no-way-is-that-real iPhone look, the M8 is equipped with a 3.3-inch VGA display (720 x 480), 3-megapixel digital camera, A/V outputs, and a dock connector. Oh, and did we mention that it's now a GSM and 3G cell phone? Riiiight.

The one bit that's stuck, though, is the ARM11 processor and WinCE (identified as version 6.0). So even though we're still filing this under "rumor" for the time being, we do believe that something unlike Meizu's other players is afoot.

[Meizu forum (Chinese) via dapreview]

While many in the U.S. are still trying to get their hands on the Meizu M6 miniPlayer, information about a rumored M8 successor has already been spotted and subsequently published (as headline news) on the front page of iMP3.net.

According to a member of the tech site's Meizu forums, early info from JW (whatever/whoever that is) seems to indicate that the M8 will feature a 2.6-inch VGA screen and run some version of Window CE on a 533 MHz ARM11 processor possibly manufactured by Samsung. It also seems that the new device will be equipped with a non-removable battery and be without an expansion card slot.

The speculative article concludes with an uncertain iconic equation: Samsung + Microsoft = Meizu? Whether any of this pans out into anything substantial remains to be seen, but we'll definitely keep an eye on it.

[iMP3]