Meizu releases high-end Ubuntu smartphone in partnership with Canonical

Canonical has announced that an Ubuntu Edition of the Meizu Pro 5 will be released. The smartphone has a 5.7″ OLED screen with 1920×1080 pixels and an Exynos soc. Support for Convergence seems to be missing.

Canonical, the maker of Ubuntu Touch, has announced that the Meizu Pro 5 Ubuntu Edition will be released worldwide soon. In a blog post about the new flagship among the Ubuntu smartphones, Canonical does not release all the information yet. However, the smartphone is a variant of the existing Meizu Pro 5 with Android and the specifications will therefore match.

Just like the Samsung Galaxy S6, the device has an Exynos 7420 octacore soc. There will be two versions: one with 3GB of ram and 32GB of storage, and one with 4GB of ram and 64GB of storage capacity. The smartphone also has two SIM slots, one of which can be used for a microSD card up to 128GB.

It seems that the phone does not support Convergence, the technology with which devices can be connected to an external screen. Canonical does not mention it in the announcement, while the emphasis was placed on this when the introduction of a new Ubuntu tablet. The Meizu Pro 5 probably does not have the correct connection options. The device does have a USB-c port, but it probably uses the old USB 2.0 protocol and therefore has no display-out functionality.

The official introduction of Meizu’s new Ubuntu smartphone will take place on February 22 during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. From then on, preorders can be placed. The price is unknown at this time.