Chinese internet company Meitu revealed plans to enter the chip industry with an in-house graphics processor named MT-AI as it unveiled its latest smartphone, the T9.

Two versions of the device are available: Standard Edition and a Summer Palace Limited Edition.

Meitu, which is well known for its beauty apps, said its smartphones are known for “setting the benchmark of achievement in selfie culture”, with the new device its most advanced yet. T9 features exclusive artificial intelligence (AI) technology which includes human pose estimation, 3D face retouching and the MT colour system, which are “more capable of bringing out the unique beauty of each individual user”.

Human Pose Estimation, the company said, precisely locates the human bone structure, to enable subjects to “adjust their entire body image” – powering the “Slender” feature.

Meitu T9 features dual lens front and rear cameras, with 2x12MP Sony main camera, optical image stabilisation for front and rear and fast focus speed. It is powered by an octacore Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, in two configurations: 4GB RAM and 64GB of storage; or 6GB RAM and 128GB storage.

Pricing is CNY3,399 ($513) and CNY4,199 respectively.

It is available in four colours: green, red, pink and blue. The T9 Summer Palace edition will follow in August.

Chip plan
Meitu said its MT-AI graphics chips will be capable of “achieving the ideal of RAW to JPG”, offering the high resolution of RAW with the compact size of JPG files. It also said this will “not only dramatically increase the speed of graphics processing and development efficiency, but also rewrite all currently known rules for filming videos with mobile phones”.

No further details were provided.