Stefan Mileschin

Some people say phones are largely boring now, which may be somewhat true. But to keep things interesting, you have companies like Meizu trying new and, erm, innovative things. Like the new Zero phone, which has no ports or buttons.

Building a phone with no ports or buttons was surely a challenge, but if we’re honest, probably no more challenging than using said phone. Hell, it doesn’t even have a speaker grille. It’s just a screen and a body. To offer the feel and function of a power button and volume rocker, Meizu packed the Zero with a “virtual side button.” It’s like Google’s Squeeze for Assistant stuff, but for buttons. It provides haptic feedback so you know you pressed something.

Naturally, it charges wirelessly. It comes with Bluetooth 5.0 for all your audio needs. The fingerprint reader is under the display. The screen works as a speaker—a 5.99-inch speaker, somehow. This thing is weird. There’s not even a SIM slot!

So, what happens when you inevitably have to perform a hard reset? There’s a pinhole, like the good ol’ days where you had to stuff a paperclip into a thing to restart it. It’s like that. For data transfers, it uses USB wireless connectivity, which Meizu claims is as fast as USB 3.0. I’m skeptical.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845 processor does the heavy lifting, though other important hardware details are non-existent right now. The Zero is IP68 dust and water resistant, which makes perfect sense for a phone with essentially no openings.

Neither price nor availability for the Zero is available, but I’d guess it will be “a lot” and “in China,” respectively. We’ll see.

https://www.reviewgeek.com/12051/the...83%84_-%C2%AF/