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Meizu Zero announced: Who needs ports and buttons anyway?
- Meizu has quietly announced the Meizu Zero smartphone.
- The new device ditches all ports and buttons, including USB-C connectivity and the SIM slot.
- The Meizu Zero has an IP68 rating and 18-watt wireless charging.
We’ve seen several rumors regarding a vivo phone with no ports, but it looks like Meizu has announced its device first. Yep, the Meizu Zero is quite possibly the first smartphone with no ports or proper buttons.
The new phone lacks a headphone jack, but companies have been ditching the standard for a couple of years now. What will surprise you, however, is that the phone ditches USB-C connectivity in favor of 18-watt wireless charging. This is faster than the Google Pixel 3‘s 10 watt wireless charging via the Pixel Stand.
Don’t bother looking for a SIM tray either, as the Meizu Zero adopts the eSIM standard. This means you don’t need a physical SIM card, as there’s a tiny SIM embedded into the device already. There’s no microSD tray either, so you have to be content with the on-board storage.
Meizu has also ditched proper physical volume and power buttons, opting for virtual buttons instead. This seems like a similar approach to the HTC U12 Plus, which adopted virtual buttons to a very negative reaction. However, Meizu is using strong haptic feedback to simulate a button being pressed, much like the virtual home key on its own phones, the recent Galaxy flagships, and the iPhone 7 series.
All these changes mean you’re left with a rather slick-looking device made out of a ceramic body. And yes, the Meizu Zero has an IP68 water/dust resistant rating, as there’s no need to seal buttons or ports in the first place.
But we do wonder whether this is a step too far, as you’re losing faster charging via a wired connection, the ability to easily connect to a computer (what if you want to flash a new ROM?), proper buttons, physical SIM support, and microSD expansion.
In terms of more conventional specs, you’re looking at a Snapdragon 845 chipset, a 5.99-inch AMOLED display with “screen sound” technology (presumably similar to piezoelectric speakers), a 20MP front camera, and a 20MP+12MP rear camera pairing. We’re not sure about battery capacity though, but we’ll update the article when we receive more information.