卦Trigram 2.0

Well, it’s hard to believe, but it seems that the Meizu M8 (which I’ve written about at length previously on this blog and its predecessor) has been launched at long, long last. It’s well over a year past its original target launch date, and I have to say – I had given up on it. However, it seems that it’s a reality now and, in theory, on the shelves.

As it happens, I’m interested again – I need a new phone for work, and I’m also filling up the memory on my 8Gb iPod Touch. A 16Gb M8 would kill two birds with one stone. I’ve read some early reviews, and they’re pretty good.

There is a problem, in that Chinese law protects China Mobile and the other telephone companies by banning the sale of phonese with wifi ability. Thus, the M8 phones sold outside China (India seems to be a major target) will have wifi, but those sold inside China will not. There’s some debate on the forums as to whether this will be achieved by physically removing the wifi card, or by disabling it via potentially reversible software/firmware hack. Either way, it’s not a huge issue for me; when I want wifi, I take my eeePC…

All of this being the case, I scouted around a number of the phone shops in Beijing’s Wudaokou are today – but none of them had even heard of it! I’ll keep my ear to the ground…