[thibs]

Smart strategy IMO, here with Meizu:

Meizu 19 renders reveal its pure white panel with a Pentax camera

[Kunzite]

Is this the little thing Asahiman was talking about?

[BigMackCam]

That's pretty cool!

@Adam - looks like we're going to need a Meizu 19 forum

[MossyRocks]

Not sure how I fell about having the Pentax name associated with cellphone shots. At 64MP with a pixel pitch of .8um and f/1.8 aperture means that the airy disk of a true point light source would at best cover 9 pixels (airy disk diameter of 2.4um) so the theoretical actual best resolution would be a bit more than 7MP assuming an ideal lens. Having seen lots of images from cellphones that while good compared to older phones leave a lot to be desired when compared to bigger cameras. Because of that I don't know if I would want to hang my brand on that although it would bring in more money for Ricoh and if the camera is better than most other offerings may bring people of to buy some of their bigger cameras. I guess that makes me old now.

[JPT]

If this gets the brand name exposure among young people, non-photographers and in other countries, it has to be a good thing in my opinion.

I've seen this brand of smartphones mentioned online but I don't think they are popular over here in Japan. Does anyone know which countries they sell in?

[ProfessorBuzz]

Geez that website had a lot of popup things. Blocked!

[Mistral75]

If this gets the brand name exposure among young people, non-photographers and in other countries, it has to be a good thing in my opinion.

I've seen this brand of smartphones mentioned online but I don't think they are popular over here in Japan. Does anyone know which countries they sell in?

According to their website:

• Asia Pacific: China, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam
• Europe: Russia, Ukraine
• Africa: Egypt.

Source: Where To Buy-Meizu

[pinholecam]

Interesting info.
Pentax should have ventured into this earlier and got better exposure (and income)
Better than never though since Canon/Nikon has not jumped on this so far.

Meizu isn't a well known/popular brand though, this is even here in Singapore where there is no "spying" "personal data" qualms.
Maybe its more popular in markets like Vietnam/India/China where there is enough space of a wider range of phone budgets and brand acceptance.

[luftfluss]

Geez that website had a lot of popup things. Blocked!

I had one popup regarding cookies, nothing more.

[JPT]

Actually, the renders do look like something you could easily put together the PowerPoint shapes. I'll believe this more when I see it announced by Meizu or Pentax.

By the way, they tried this with GR branded camera lenses on Sharp smartphones a few years ago. It didn't really work out, perhaps because GR isn't a household name like Pentax is/was, and now Sharp is doing the same with Leica. But it isn't the first time RICOH IMAGING has tried this.

[lemono]

That picture is an imaginary picture made by fan himself.

[RobA_Oz]

Put this together with Theta 360° technology and they’d have a unique smart-phone product. No doubt the necessary notch on the screen would be a source of derision in some quarters.

[biz-engineer]

Maybe an idea for Ricoh to provide us with Pentax label we can stick onto our smartphone camera lens module?

[BigMackCam]

Not sure how I fell about having the Pentax name associated with cellphone shots. At 64MP with a pixel pitch of .8um and f/1.8 aperture means that the airy disk of a true point light source would at best cover 9 pixels (airy disk diameter of 2.4um) so the theoretical actual best resolution would be a bit more than 7MP assuming an ideal lens. Having seen lots of images from cellphones that while good compared to older phones leave a lot to be desired when compared to bigger cameras. Because of that I don't know if I would want to hang my brand on that although it would bring in more money for Ricoh and if the camera is better than most other offerings may bring people of to buy some of their bigger cameras. I guess that makes me old now.

Meizu isn't a well known/popular brand though, this is even here in Singapore where there is no "spying" "personal data" qualms.
Maybe its more popular in markets like Vietnam/India/China where there is enough space of a wider range of phone budgets and brand acceptance.

A few points:

1) Whilst Meizu may not be a well-known / popular brand in the West, its 18 and 18 Pro models appear to be very capable mid-to-high-end smartphones with good photographic capability. The 18 Pro sells for around USD $800.

2) Although the main camera sensor on the Meizu 19 will be 64MP, it will almost certainly use pixel-binning to improve image quality (this is how such sensors are implemented in the majority of current phones). The 64MP sensor and camera app will likely produce 16MP images as standard.

3) I have a relatively low-to-mid-range smartphone, the Xiamoi Redmi Note 9 Pro Max. Its main camera also uses a 64MP sensor with 0.8µm pixels, and an f/1.9 fixed aperture lens. With pixel-binning, it outputs 16MP files as standard. While the JPEG image quality is typical smartphone fayre - punchy and over-sharpened - it also shoots DNG raw, where the image quality from the main camera is actually very good indeed.

If the Meizu 19 is a high-quality, well-sorted product, having the Pentax name associated with its camera could boost sales and open up new markets... and Ricoh would benefit by getting the Pentax name out to a wider audience, increasing brand awareness. Some of today's smartphone photographers might be tomorrow's ILC buyers. I think it could be a profitable move for both companies

[BarneyL]

Please bear in mind that Ricoh Imaging is not the only entity with rights to 'Pentax' name. Actually, IIRC, rights to Pentax brand still belong to Hoya, they are just licensed to Ricoh. So it might be more about Hoya than Ricoh (although lemono says it's just a fan picture, so it might be just that).