Meizu M1 Note Review – A big iPhone 5c with Android

Cons

• Little original design
• The software leaves much to be desired
• Ergonomically not too handy

Meizu slips everywhere. The manufacturer was not among the ‘first generation’ Chinese smartphone makers who became big around 2010. Huawei became the largest in the west and ZTE also gained some fame. Of the newer Chinese brands, Xiaomi in particular seems to be successful, just like Lenovo, known for laptops, with Motorola as its strongest asset, which was sold by Google to Lenovo last year.

Meizu achieved some fame in 2007 as the builder of one of the first iPhone clones, which came to market after almost two years. The Chinese manufacturer is now known for more than copying other people’s products. For example, Meizu signs for the first high-end phone with Ubuntu and has almost only 15:9 screens with its high-end phones, where the rest of the phone manufacturers opt for 16:9 screens.

The first Android smartphone from Meizu that we review is the M1 Note. It is a device as various manufacturers make them: a large and relatively cheap smartphone.

Design

Although Meizu has now moved beyond counterfeiting iPhones, it is clear where this Chinese Abraham gets its inspiration. The M1 Note is very similar to an iPhone 5c with the size of an iPhone 6 Plus. The colored plastic housing, the curves and the way of design are all reminiscent of it. What also helps to associate the M1 Note with an iPhone is the round icon of the capacitive button below the screen. The bottom gives it away completely, because it looks pretty much the same.

Now the iPhone 5c is a curious example, because other manufacturers follow the iPhone 6 or iPhone 5s because of the more luxurious metal housings. However, it remains a little original design and that is a pity, because Meizu has already proven that it can also make original devices.

The M1 Note is quite large at 15×7.5cm and not exactly thin at 8.9mm. It is nice to hold, although you can of course forget about using it with one hand.

The power button is at the top, which is very inconvenient with such a large phone. You can also turn off the screen by holding the capacitive home button for a long time. You can turn it on again with a double tap on the screen or with gestures that you can set yourself on the screen.

Hardware

The M1 Note is the first phone we review with a MediaTek MT6752, featuring eight Cortex A53 processor cores at up to 1.7GHz. The GPU is a Mali-T760 from ARM itself. With a working memory of 2GB, it is well-endowed for a phone in this price range.

The M1 Note does support 2g and 3g networks, but with 4g it is limited. It does not support the commonly used 800MHz band on 4g and the 900MHz and 2600MHz bands are also missing. It does have support for 4G at 1800MHz.

The phone has bluetooth 4.0 on board for wireless connections, while supporting wifi with the a/g/b/n standards. Wi-Fi-ac is therefore missing, but it can receive Wi-Fi signals at 5GHz. It is therefore fully equipped for a device in this price range.

Screen

The screen has a diagonal of 5.5″ and a resolution of 1920×1080 pixels. It is an IPS LCD from the Sharp factories. It looks sharp and in many cases is at least nice to read in direct sunlight , but it doesn’t excel at that.

The screen of our review sample appeared to suffer from backlight bleeding at the bottom. Not a huge problem, but it doesn’t look neat. Other than that detail, the screen is fine, with good viewing angles and enough detail to impress.

Software

The software is striking. It is a Meizu-customized variant of Android called Flyme OS and clearly made for Chinese-speaking users. For example, the settings menu is a split screen. With Chinese characters, it will undoubtedly all fit, but in English it is guessing what some institutions do.

Flyme OS also took some inspiration from the skins of Huawei and Xiaomi. It has support for themes including the most hideous and some nicer ones as usual. For example, the pink Hello Kitty theme is something that will appeal to some people, but since it also replaces all icons, it doesn’t make the interface any clearer. It does have striking functions, such as being able to ‘pin’ apps in the multitask overview, a function that Android itself has only had since 5.0.

But there are also things missing. For example, we searched in vain for airplane mode in the software. There’s only a toggle, but no entry in the Settings menu, wherever you’d expect it to be. Nevertheless, it works after some getting used to. However, as soon as a custom rom with stock Android became available, we would install it.

Camera

The camera is easy to start with a gesture on the screen when the device is off, a function that the OnePlus One and other Chinese phones also have. That makes starting the camera fairly fast.

The camera module is presumably a Samsung S5K3L2, a 1/3.06″ sensor with a maximum resolution of thirteen megapixels. This sensor is also found in Samsung’s own Galaxy S4. The front camera is an Omnivision OV6570, with a maximum resolution of five megapixels and an f/2.0 aperture.

Excellent pictures are produced for a phone in this price range, even in slightly less light. It is a camera that can capture a lot of detail in good light and, moreover, is not completely worthless in less light, partly because it is a bright f/2.0 camera.

Battery life

The M1 Note does not have a small battery: with 3140mAh it is quite large. The battery life in daily practice is good, but not spectacular; it is what we have come to expect from large smartphones. It also performed well in the tests. In PCMark’s test it scored higher than many high-end devices, in our video test it reached almost nine hours and that is also sufficient. The browsing test crashed four times so we couldn’t do it.

All in all, you can say that you should be able to get through the day with this device, but a second day will be a challenge for many people.

Conclusion

We liked the M1 Note as the first Meizu phone, but we expected more from a company that has been working on smartphones for years. The screen is fine, but the backlight bleeding on our sample looked sloppy. Flyme OS gives the device its own face, but if labels don’t fit into boxes, the whole thing doesn’t look thought through.

The Meizu phone will probably cost around 250 euros, although it will probably also be available for slightly less. For that price you have similar devices from other Chinese brands via import. Those who prefer a well-known brand can, for example, choose from a Samsung Galaxy Grand 2 4g, HTC Desire 816 or Sony Xperia T3.

Meizu won’t have an easy time distinguishing itself from other brands in this crowded market, where major manufacturers have also noticed that smaller Chinese companies are impressing with larger, cheaper devices. The M1 Note won’t convince many people overnight, but all in all it offers more than adequate value for money.