Meizu is one of the top 10 manufacturers in China. Following a heavy infusion of capital investment from Alibaba in February, the company announced plans to launch in India a month later and finally launched the m1 Note in May.
I bouught meizu from Snapdeal. Priced at Rs. 6, 999, the m2 offers a solid set of specifications and features, while keeping the price competitive.
Look and feel
The Meizu m2 has a distinct look, It has Apple’s designs to a certain extent, especially the front which has only a single physical button. While this might look good, the button has to serve as both the Home and Back keys, since it’s both touch sensitive and physical. Tapping the key serves as the Back command, while pressing down serves as the Home command.
It comes with 5-inch 720x1280-pixel screen with Dragontrail glass for damage protection. It’s a convenient size, and easy to carry. While the display is decent in terms of colour, detail and resolution, it isn’t quite as bright as we’d like, even at full brightness.
The power and volume keys are on the right; the USB port and speaker are at the bottom; the SIM tray is on the left; and the 3.5mm socket is at the top. The back is simple and tasteful, with the camera and flash at the top, along with the Meizu logo near the bottom. I like the curved lower edges and dull finish of the m2. At just 131g, it’s comfortable to hold and easy to grip.
The device does not have a removable rear panel, so the battery is not user accessible. The SIM tray on the left edge is a hybrid one, which means that you can have either dual-SIM connectivity or expandable storage, but not both. Fortunately, the device comes with 16GB of internal storage, which is quite helpful.
Specifications and software
The Meizu m2 is a 4G-capable device, with both SIM slots capable of supporting LTE(4G) connectivity. If you choose to use the hybrid slot for expandable storage, you can insert up to a 128GB microSD card. The device has 2GB of RAM, a 2500mAh battery, and runs on a MediaTek MT6735 SoC. It is 1.3GHz quad-core SoC with a Mali-T720MP2 GPU,
The m2 runs on Flyme 4.5 OS, a highly customised skin based on Android 5.1. It bears very little aesthetic resemblance to stock Android, and changes a lot about how the system operates. While innovation in software is admirable and should be encouraged to help set devices apart, we can’t help but feel that Flyme OS changes things only for the sake of being different.The root option for phone is available in the flyme account which enables on click root process.
Camera
The Meizu m2 has a 13-megapixel primary camera with single-tone LED flash, along with a 5-megapixel front camera. Both can record video at up to 1080p and use all the available modes, including auto, manual, beauty, panorama, light field, scan, and slow motion.
The camera app is a bit slow, and switching between modes is buggy and takes too long, since it involves swiping the screen multiple times to get to mode you want. There are quick options for video, flash, filters and the camera switcher, so the rest of the app is not too bad.
The camera itself is acceptable for a budget device, but has some issues. Colours are a bit dull, with images appearing too soft and unexciting. Additionally, the shots lack detail when zoomed in to. Finally it has satisfactiry camera
Performance
The phone also did well with our test videos, running all of them well, including the ones encoded at a high bit rate. Angry Birds 2 and Dead Trigger 2 both produced some heat at the back of the device, as well as heavy battery drain, but the build and materials used ensured that it cooled down quickly. The phone is usually snappy when navigating around the interface and basic apps, although we did find certain apps such as the camera and browser to be occasionally slow to load and process commands.
Battery life was average for a device in this price range, with the phone running for just under 9 hours in our video loop test. In day-to-day use, the Meizu m2 will run for a full day under moderate usage conditions. Most basic users will be satisfied with the performance of the Meizu m2 for their smartphone requirements.
Overall a must buy phone.