Meizu, the company that, depending on who you ask, is a high profile device manufacturer or a dirty, dirty copycat – Meizu copied the iPhone UI, Meizu announced their UI before Apple, their media player is better than Apple’s iPods, their M8 is a complete ripoff of the iPhone, they make appearances at legitimate high-profile electronics shows like CeBIT and the Hong Kong Electronics Fair, their booths are raided by police on suspicion of piracy and IP theft – has put up a new section of their Chinese-language website for the fabled M9 Android smartphone, with – finally! – solid details of its specs and availability.

Specs are as follows:

• 960×640, 3.5-inch, 16 million color Sharp ASV capacitive touch screen
• GSM, GPRS,EDGE,WCDMA,HSDPA,HSUPA
• Wi-Fi, WAPI (Chinese WLAN Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure standard)
• Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
• 1GHz Samsung S5PC110 Cortex A8
• Gravity, ambient light, infrared distance, touch sensors
• GPS and A-GPS
• AVI, MP4, 3GP, MOV, MKV, FLV videos; FLAC, APE, MP3, OGG, AMR, AAC audio; JPEG, PNG, BMP, GIF images
• 500 megapixel CMOS camera with 720p HD recording, autofocus, touch-to-focus, digital zoom
• 1370mAh lithium-polymer battery
• MiniUSB port
• 3.5mm stereo headphone port
• MicroSDHC card slot, up to 32GB
• 59.8×113.0×11.2 mm or 2.35×4.45×0.45 in
• 123 g; 4.34 oz

For a company that had negative press with their M8, it seems that more good things are being said about their upcoming M9 smartphone – including its hardware, choice of screen, and ease of use. I suppose it does look rather similar to Apple’s iPhone, but certainly not in that different a way than, say, the Sharp IS03 looking like the iPhone or the Samsung Galaxy S UI looking like iOS.

The website seems to have little coding problems; its image gallery is broken and the main page tries to sneak off stage screen left if you look at it wrong.

Edit: Added some commentary to clarify my opinion of the M9.