A previously unannounced Meizu flip phone project has surfaced in new leak chatter, with multiple people familiar with the brand suggesting the device once advanced to the B2 stage before being sidelined.
According to the original Chinese report, blogger NothingCat shared details about a compact foldable Meizu had been working on. A former Meizu employee later reposted the claim and said the internal project name was Vermilion Bird project.
The leaked description points to a fairly conservative small-foldable design. The device was said to use a 3000mAh battery and a relatively small outer display. In the source discussion, that combination was viewed as underwhelming, especially in a market where buyers now expect foldables to offer more practical battery life and more useful cover-screen interactions.
The report also ties the project to Meizu’s earlier public comments. In April 2024, Xingji Meizu CEO Su Jing said the company did indeed have plans for a foldable phone and that development was still moving forward. That lined up with even earlier signals from 2023, when Meizu executives indicated a foldable product was on the roadmap, though no commercial launch ever followed.
Back in 2023, industry watchers had already cast doubt on whether the device would make it to mass production. One well-known Chinese leaker argued at the time that software adaptation would be difficult and hardware costs would stay high. Meizu executive Huang Zhipan responded by saying the company had raised its own expectations for foldable products and would redefine the category rather than ship something with weak competitiveness.
What makes this leak more notable now is the company’s strategic shift. As the source article notes, Meizu announced in February this year that it would pause self-developed new smartphone hardware projects for the domestic market while actively pursuing third-party hardware partnerships. That change makes the leaked foldable phone plan look much less likely to reach consumers in its original form.
So while the project appears to have been real, it also seems to have arrived at the wrong moment. If the leaked details are accurate, Meizu did more than casually explore the idea of a clamshell foldable. It pushed the concept far enough to give it an internal identity and move it through a meaningful development stage, only for wider business priorities to get in the way.
