Jan 09, 2016 01:13 PM
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Meizu, the latest Chinese vendor to enter the Indian phone market, wants to ensure it launches phones in all price segments. After the top-of-the-line Meizu MX5 and sub-Rs 10k m2 note, the company has now announced the entry-level Meizu m2 that will compete in the lucrative sub-Rs 7, 000 segment. First triggered by Motorola, followed by Xiaomi, Lenovo, Micromax and others, the sub-Rs 7k is a very popular budget segment in India and the device will have some stiff competition to look forward to. The m2 has now reached our labs and we’ve had a thorough look at its various aspects to see how it fares.
Design wise, the Meizu m2 looks a lot like other Meizu smartphones, such as the m2 Note, the MX5 and the m1 Note. It has a unibody design, with the body made from sturdy polycarbonate. With a smooth finish and curved edges at the back, the smartphone has a minimal, yet a sophisticated look.
The front is dominated by a 5-inch HD(720p) IPS display. Above the display, you have an earpiece, front-facing 5-megapixel camera and a proximity sensor, whereas there is a physical home button sits below the screen.On the back, you have a 13-megapixel camera module, an LED flash and the Meizu branding.
The top has a 3.5-mm audio jack, whereas the microUSB port is located at the bottom, flanked by a mic and speaker grille on the either sides. The right edge has a volume rocker and a power/sleep button, whereas the left side has a hybrid-dual SIM tray. There is slight disadvantage as you can either use two SIM cards, or a SIM card and a microSD card, but not both.
The Meizu m2 comes powered by a MediaTek MT6735 chipset clocked at 1.3GHz and coupled with 2GB of RAM. This is something we see in most devices in this price bracket. The 16GB onboard storage is expandable up to 128GB. So, roughly 10GB is accessible to users. Here’s when those looking for more storage and dual SIM ability will find themselves in a fix. The m2 runs Android 5.1-based Flyme 4.5 OS. Meizu has heavily customised the skin, and if you’ve been a stock Android user, then you’ll take some time getting around the new UI. The Flyme OS brings some new features customised for Meizu users, but most of them are not yet available for India users, owing to Chinese content. Besides, there are many changes in the UI, which seem to make it more complicated rather than simplifying navigation across the device.On the display front, it gets a 5-inch HD display with 1280 x 720 pixels of resolution. The device gets a Dragon Trail glass covering. There’s 13MP rear snapper with f/2.2 aperture and LED flash and a 5MP front camera with f/2.0. The connectivity options include Wi-Fi 802.11n, Bluetooth, A-GPS and 4G support. It also gets a non-removable 2500mAh battery.
Hardware and software work in tandem to create a compelling smartphone experience. Meizu’s Flyme operating system has been polarizing to say the least. The interface is anything but stock though we find the experience quite refreshing.The lock screen is a simple affair and requires you to swipe to unlock as you’d expect. Nothing extraordinary there. Once you’re on the homescreen, you are greeted by crisp icons part of the Flyme UI. The interface eschews a dual level hierarchy and so places all icons on the homescreen itself.Changes run deep throughout the interface. The app switcher in particular is a peculiar modification and one that we’re not really fond of. Swipe up from either side of the home button and you are given access to the last few accessed applications. The notifications hub on the other hand is mostly the same with some tweaks.It is possible to select the connected WiFi hotspot right from the lockscreen itself and some of the other toggles too can be adjusted. Step into the settings menu and you’ll likely be caught off guard. Reminiscent of Android’s tablet UI, this is a two pane set up and looks very cluttered. It can get confusing to use the settings menu especially the typography is entirely replaced by iconography. Nonetheless, there is some good here too like the about section as shown above which points out all the essentials at a glance. Really though, the entire usage experience is an acquired taste. Given that the phone combines the back button and home button into a single touch/tap paradigm, there’s really no way to say that this will work for you till the time you’ve actually tried it out. On our part, we kinda like the clean look but feel that there are some changes that appear to be tacked on for no reason whatsoever.
Let’s begin with the most basic function – call quality. The device offers good call quality and we didn’t face issues making or receiving calls even in a packed Mumbai local train. The Dialler app is simple too. The device allowed decent multitasking, however, it did start heating up after a while, especially when casual mobile gaming was combined with web surfing. We didn’t try any heavy games. The device was pretty smooth otherwise, it didn’t lag or stutter while navigating or browsing. The MediaTek MT6735 chipset clocked at 1.3GHz pulls out a decent performance, and the 2GB of RAM makes it capable of handling apps quite well.
In line with competition and ahead of some, the Meizu m2 features a 13MP rear snapper and a 5MP front-facing camera. Both cameras can record videos up to 1080p. When it comes to camera, Meizu has crafted well-thought menu such as options like HDR, saving first in SD card, and several modes: Auto, manual, beauty, panaroma, Light field, Scan and Slowmotion. You can also add filters such as Grayness, Azure, Black&White and more.
In terms of connectivity, the Meizu m2 is equipped with 4G LTE / 3G HSPA+, WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n(2.4GHz/5GHz), Bluetooth 4.0, GPS and GLONASS. It is really unfortunate that the phone follows the recent trend of having a hybrid SIM card slot. This means that the secondary card slot can either be used for the SIM card or as a microSD slot. Given that the handset ships only in a 16GB configuration, unless your storage requirements are minimal you’ll probably be using this as a single SIM device. That said, of the 16GB storage there’s about 10GB available and you can use USB OTG as well.
The Meizu m2 isn’t a perfect smartphone but it is still a very good smartphone indeed. From great build quality to excellent audio playback, battery life, there’s a lot to like here. Performance on the other hand is somewhat middling but then the well optimized software makes up for it.We found the display to be somewhat muted with brightness levels that felt a bit lacking. All in all, the Meizu m2 wasn’t the sure shot hit that we expected it to be. We would still recommend the Meizu m2 as a strong contender in the sub Rs. 10, 000 segment but you’d be well served to try out the CoolPad Note 3 as well before you invest in the handset.The Meizu m2 is priced at Rs. 6, 999 in India.
