Meizu Pro 7 now official, packs weird rear screen because reasons

Earlier this month, we saw the Meizu Pro 7 leaking, but it wasn’t the internals that had us intrigued. Nope, it was the fact that the leaks showed a smaller screen on the back.

We’ve seen rear-mounted screens before, but all of these have been e-ink displays, such as the YotaPhone and Oukitel U6. Instead, the leaked images showed a phone with a small colour screen on the back.

Now, the Meizu Pro 7 has officially been announced and those leaked images are indeed the real deal.

Starting at RMB2880 (R5516 as a straight conversion), the Pro 7 features a 5.2-inch full HD AMOLED screen, that tiny colour screen on the back, the long overdue Helio X30 processor (update: Meizu has clarified that the standard Pro 7 packs a Helio P25 chip while the X30 is reserved for the Plus model), 4GB of RAM and 64GB of expandable storage. The phone also packs a 3000mAh battery with Meizu’s mCharge 3 fast-charging tech.

There’s also a Meizu Pro 7 Plus, packing similar features save for a 5.7-inch 1440p AMOLED display, 6GB of RAM, 64GB or 128GB of storage and a 3500mAh battery with mCharge 4 tech. In fact, the company says the plus model can hit 67 percent battery capacity in 30 minutes.

The Meizu Pro 7 and Pro 7 Plus have a rear display, but what is it actually good for?

In the camera department, there’s a 16MP selfie shooter, but the rear also plays host to a dual-camera setup. We’ve got two 12MP f/2.0 cameras, with one shooting in colour and the other shooting monochrome images (akin to Huawei’s devices).

What about the rear display though? Meizu says it’s an AMOLED screen that allows you to easily take selfies with the main cameras, show your music playback controls and deliver always-on functionality.

But with a 16MP selfie shooter and current phones more than capable of showing music playback buttons and always-on information, it’s going to take a lot more functionality to make the rear display an industry standard.

We’ve contacted Meizu South Africa to find out whether the Pro 7 was coming to the country.