People have always been interested in the Meizu Note Series. This trend which was set up with the Meizu M1 Note offering a bigger screen as well as ample of features has been carried on successfully by the two successors of it being launched over the past few months. The Meizu M2 Note offered a greater memory, while now the latest in the line-up Meizu M3 Note offers new features, a bigger battery, higher performance and an all metal design.
The phone is already making its space in the smartphone market and is coming with a number of changes. The phone is being looked forward by many. It offers an all new metal body with a newly incorporated fingerprint sensor. Let’s see what else does this have under its hood.
DESIGN: As mentioned above, the gadget now has an all new metal body. The phone has changed the material, however, the design as well as look are the same as offered by the predecessors, especially Meizu MX5. The phone has been made simply out of metal, and there are a few cuts made of plastic of course left for the antenna. The phone has been painted beautifully so that there are no differences between the plastic front as well as the metallic back.
The screen has been protected with a scratch as well as shock resistant glass which offers a 2.5D effect. This glass makes the screen or let’s say the phone look thinner as well as has made it easy to hold the phone with a firm grip.
Overall, this phone has been designed beautifully without any issues caused by the antenna cuts.
SOFTWARE: This phone runs on Flyme 5.1 OS, which is a modified version of the Google’s Android 5.1. The interface offered by this OS is simple, and the lock screen can be opened just by flicking it upwards. There are no shortcuts except the camera shortcut present on the lock screen.
The phone provides an option of Gesture makeup, and you can utilize some gestures to open the app you like while your phone is asleep. Holding down the home button, you will see the voice search being launched. The home screen of the phone is simple, and you get two panes by default which can of course be extended.
Notification area provided contains four options, and you can view more by dragging the tab down. You can customize the phone options as well as icons using the themes provided however this option is only limited to the Chinese version. Also, as the phone is big in size, Meizu provides an option known as the ‘Smart Touch’ which is a 4-way movable key to which you can assign a number of functionalities.
DISPLAY: The phone offers you a display of 5.5 inches IPS LCD. It provides a resolution of 1080p and hence has quite good viewing angles. The high resolution offered is definitely worth your money. 403 PPI display is sufficient to meet your requirements, and you won’t feel anything missing unless you are reading minuscule fonts.
If we talk about the brightness levels, then these are less than its predecessor as well as the black levels are not good. This leads to a lower contrast ratio offered by the device. The color reproduction is something that needs a lot of improvement, as there are many inconsistent variations from true color.
CAMERA: The phone flaunts a 13MP camera with dual tone flash. However, you wouldn’t find too impressive images being clicked by the camera. The attention to detail is poor, and you will always observe some blurry spots right near the center of the image. Also, autofocus tends to fail sometimes; therefore, you would need to focus manually. If we talk about the positive aspects, then this phone offers quite a good color reproduction as well as contrast levels.
Unlike the primary camera, you would be quite impressed with the selfie camera as it tends to offer a far greater level of detail than you would expect from a 5 MP camera.
BATTERY LIFE: The phone is packed up with an impressive 4100mAh battery which is 30 percent more than its predecessor. The battery offers an impressive life of 69 hours in the performance mode, but there is another power saving option available.
The phone offers very high levels of endurance when tested with 3G browsing, high gaming, etc. This is definitely one of the USP’s of this new gadget.
ACCESSORIES: As any other smartphone in the box, apart from the gadget, you would find a 2A fast charger along with a micro USB cable. There is a SIM extraction tool, but sadly there aren’t any headphones provided.
VARIANT: The new Meizu M3 Note is available in three colors namely White, Gold, and Grey. The Gold and Silver give it a look of an iPhone while the White gives it a pretty appearance. All the variants of this phone have been priced at Rs. 9999.
VERDICT: The overall Meizu M3 doesn’t go above the Chinese smartphone style we are habitual of seeing. However, compared to its predecessors, this phone offers a better design as well as a better performance. There has been new inclusion such as fingerprint sensor which we liked.
We understand that the phone has been designed keeping the budget in control; however this has failed in delivering anything exceptional. The phone has tried to score on its design but has failed in terms of delivering a comparable performance. Recently the launch of the Metal M1 has proved to be a much better choice as compared to this phone. Meizu M3 Note scores over M1 metal only concerning its battery backup offered. Other than this, Meizu M1 Note metal is a better choice.
