Meizu MX3

Samsung Galaxy Note III or Sony’s Honami, but there are also plenty of new smartphones being announced by companies that don’t typically draw so much of our focus. Often, that’s for geographical reasons, with us devoting less coverage to models that don’t typically find wide sales outside of Asia. Still, that doesn’t stop these manufacturers from putting out handsets with some top-notch-sounding features, like the one we’re hearing about this morning, the Meizu MX3.

We talked about Meizu’s launch efforts for the MX back in the early days of 2012, and the company followed-up with the MX2 about a year later. The MX3 brings the company’s offerings up to the level of modern hardware with specs like an Exynos 5 Octa SoC powering the phone.

There’s also 2GB of RAM, a Sony-made eight-megapixel camera with sapphire glass protection, and a Wolfson audio chip for high-quality output. The display is a bit odd, measuring-in at 5.1 inches but with an unusual 1800 x 1080 resolution, giving the MX3 an odd 15:9 aspect ratio. Storage options start out at 16GB, but go as high as 128GB for those of you with a serious need for capacity.

This is all just scratching the surface – there’s a triple-mic noise-canceling setup, global 3G radio, and Meizu’s custom Flyme 3.0 ROM. Prices for the MX3 will range from what works out to about $410 for the 16GB model, up to $650 for 128GB.