Meizu MX5 First Impressions: A sub 25k flagship phone market has another competitor

Chinese phone maker Meizu had its brand launch in India on 26 August. Meizu had entered the Indian market via a soft launch on Amazon with its m1 note. This was quickly followed by the launch of the Meizu m2 note. The brand launch was also used as a platform to launch their flagship phone, the Meizu MX5 which was released in China in June this year. We had a chance to play around with the device and here are our first impressions.

Design and build Considering this is Meizu’s flagship phone which will replace the MX4, the MX5 comes with a metal body design, in a matte grey finish with two chrome lines on the top and lower portions. Despite having a metal build, the phone is quite light to hold in the hand and weighs just 149g with a 7.6mm thickness. Thanks to the metal build, the surface is quite slippery.  The buttons on the right hand side have a good feedback to them. The dual nano SIM tray is located on the left hand side. On the front you have a 5.5inch display with a button placed in the centre at the base. This button houses the fingerprint sensor and also functions as a home as well as back button. On the rear side the camera module protrudes out slightly. Display The Meizu MX5 comes with a 5.5-inch full HD SuperAMOLED display. It comes with the Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection. The display certainly looks much vibrant than what we had seen with the Meizu m2 note which also comes with a 5.5-inch Full HD display.  Chipset, RAM, Storage The Meizu MX5 comes with the MediaTek Helio X10 or the MT6795 chipset which has an octa core processor clocked at 2.2GHz. On the graphics front you have a PowerVR G6200 graphics solution. This is paired with 3GB of RAM.  On the storage front you get the MX5 in the 16GB, 32GB and 64GB variants of which the 16GB variant has been launched for Rs 19,999. There is no expandable storage option on the MX5. OS, Connectivity Meizu has its own custom user interface called Flyme UI and the MX5 comes with Android 5.0 with the Flyme 4.5 UI atop it. It comes with its quirks such as the home button also functioning as a back button, customised settings screen and so on. For someone used to the stock Android UI, there is a slight learning curve involved.  On the connectivity front you have a dual nano SIM card slot which can take in 3G as well as 4G SIM cards. It comes with WiFi 802.11ac, WiFi Direct, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS with A-GPS, GLONASS and sensors such as the gyro, accelerometer, proximity sensor. Camera The Meizu MX5 has gone for the top of the line Sony 20.7MP sensor for the rear camera which comes with a 6-element lens. On the front you get a 5MP camera. While the rear camera is capable of shooting 4K videos at 30fps, the front camera can shoot fullHD videos at 30fps. The camera specs are certainly impressive and should give a good image quality. But we shall wait till we get to use the camera on the MX5 while testing it.  Another plus point with the camera is the presence of the Laser AF section for quicker focussing. The light conditions at the demo zone weren’t ideal to try out the AF speed checks. So we will have to hold our opinion on that front. Battery The Meizu MX5 comes with a 3,150mAh non removable Li-ion battery. This is a decent battery spec for a flagship phone. It supports quick-charging feature which lets you charge the phone from 0 to 25 percent in 10mins according to Meizu. We will have to confirm that after our tests.   Conclusion Meizu has added another competitor in the sub-Rs 25,000 price bracket. It comes with impressive specs on paper, a metal body with a pleasant design, with topline camera sensor and high capacity battery. From the features on offer, the Meizu MX5 has the potential break the duopoly that was held by Xiaomi Mi 4 and OnePlus One so far in that price bracket. Will this be a phone to consider? We will be able to answer that only after testing the phone.