Meizu MX5 review: Good overall package; but enough competition in the sub-20k price bracket

Meizu is a relatively new Chinese phone maker to have entered the Indian market. It has launched the m1 note and the m2 note before this and just recently announced the m2. The Meizu MX5 represents the top-of-the-line phone from the Meizu lineup. Of course, it is no longer the flagship phone considering the fact that Meizu has annouced the Pro 5 in China, not long ago. So let us have a look at Meizu’s ‘India flagship’ phone - the MX5. Build and Design: 8/10  Considering this is Meizu’s flagship phone in India, which will replace the MX4, the MX5 comes with a metal unibody design. It has a matte grey finish with two chrome lines on the top and lower ends. The chrome elements are also seen on the slope of the edge of the phone. 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. For added grip, you will be better off with a silicon based cover.  And yes, the resemblance to the Apple iPhone 5c is obviously there, but this one has a metal cover in place of the plastic seen on the 5c.    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. The top portion has the 3.5mm audio jack whereas the microUSB charging and data transfer port is located at the base. To the right hand side of the microUSB port, you have the speaker grill section. On the rear side the camera module protrudes out slightly. Features: 7.5/10  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 in India. You get 14.56GB available for use. There is no expandable storage option on the MX5.  The MX5 sports a 5.5-inch full HD AMOLED display and runs on Android 5.0.1 with the Flyme OS 4.5 user interface atop it. There is a 20.7MP rear camera along with a 5MP front-facing. In terms of connectivity, you get a dual-nano SIM card slot with support for 4G LTE cards, Wi-fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS with A-GPS, GLONASS and an infrared port. There is no support for NFC or FM radio. A 3,150mAh battery completes the picture.     Software: 6.5/10 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 learning curve involved. The home button also houses the finger-print scanner.  The design language is completely different from the Android Lollipop. For starters, there are no back or task-switch soft keys. To go back you simple touch the home button and you will be able to go back. To come to the home screen from anywhere, just press on to the home button. Also to pull up the recently used apps, you need to swipe up from the left or right hand side of the button. These gestures will take some time getting familiar with, if you are used to using the soft keys on either side of the home button to either go back or see currently open apps. To use the fingerprint scanner, you will need to have a registered Flyme account. We had noticed that the user interface was designed keeping Chinese fonts in mind, when we were testing the m2 note. Things haven’t changed. This becomes evident when you open the settings menu as well as with the notifications. The font size, even when made small, gives text which overflows on notifications and in the settings menu.  The two columns for settings menu is quite cumbersome and if you are used to the traditional Android settings menu, this will come across as a bit odd. Also it is a pain to get into the Settings menu, as notification pull down gesture does not have the settings menu icon anywhere. So you will have to place the Settings app right up on the home page. In terms of Google apps, the phone only had Play Store, Maps and Search from the Google bouquet. Other apps such as Gmail, YouTube need to be downloaded. Also most of the proprietary apps such as App Centre and Personalise only had Chinese apps.   It does come with its own file manager, email client, browser, and Security apps. The Security app lets you clean junk, clean apps, manage traffic, tweak power-saving mode, select app permissions and so on. If you are coming from a stock Android OS, then this will involve some learning curve to find your way around. Display: 7/10 The Meizu MX5 comes with a 5.5-inch full HD Super AMOLED 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. Watching full HD movies on the display is a joy, thanks to the good contrast ratio and deep blacks. But make sure there aren’t any direct light sources behind you as the display is quite reflective. Performance: 7.5/10 The Meizu MX5 has a propensity to heat up and thanks to the metal rear cover, the heat transfers across the rear side making it quite warm after prolonged usage of certain apps. Gaming is smooth on the MX5, even with heavy games such as Dead Trigger 2 and Modern Combat 5, but the heating issue does crop up.    Call quality is good. The software despite the skin is quite responsive and we didn’t notice a slowdown in app operation or animations. However, in some apps such as the Camera app, we noticed a slight delay in starting the app. You need to get used to Meizu’s Flyme interface, but it lets you install custom launchers such as the Google Now launcher, in case you want the app drawer back.  The speaker section on the phone is loud for sure, but it is not the best of sound quality. You could certainly watch a video in a room, without using earphones. But to appreciate the sound output, it is best to invest in the separate set of earphones. The fingerprint scanner works well. It can take in around 5 fingerprints and is speedy. There were a couple of occasions when the phone took longer than usual to unlock the phone when the fingers were sweaty/oily. But 7/10 times the unlocking is speedy. Camera: 7/10 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 full HD videos at 30fps.The camera interface is simple and quite user-friendly. You can toggle between various modes such as Auto, Manual, Beauty, Macro and so on by just swiping on the screen (think the Cyanogen Mod camera interface on the OnePlus One). It has a barcode scanner mode as well as slow motion video mode in the list. It also gives you the option to activate gridlines as well as level gauge. PS: Image samples have been resized here. To check the full resolution, please click on the images  Daylight photographs are detailed with natural colours and controlled chromatic aberrations. However, we noticed on 100% zoom that the sharpness wasn’t that impressive. The dynamic range with the HDR photos is average. We noticed that in case of extreme contrast levels, the camera would either give a blown out image or underexposed shadow regions based on the metering - the balance was missing. Focussing speed in daylight is fast.  The manual mode lets you adjust the focal length, ISO, shutter speed and exposure. The low light photographs are lacking in detail and do show a lot of chromatic noise. The Beauty mode on the has features for widening eyes, whitening skin, slimming face and so on - frankly the output looks weird. Output of the selfie camera without the beauty mode is good only in daylight. In addition to full HD videos, it is capable of shooting 4K videos as well. Video output is good enough for casual shooting in daylight.   Battery Life: 7.5/10  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 called mCharge which lets you charge the phone from 0 to 25 percent in 10mins. It took around 15-18 mins to do that in real world scenario. The PC Mark for Android test gave an onscreen time of 8 hours 38 minutes which is quite good. Surprisingly, the standby battery consumption is high, which Meizu needs to fix with its upcoming software updates. It is annoying to see Phone idle as the biggest battery life consumer. It does offer the power saving and balance modes apart from the Performance mode.  The phone easily lasts you for a working day. Verdict and Price in India Meizu MX5 has been priced at Rs 19,999 for the 16GB variant. At this price it competes with its Chinese peers such as Xiaomi Mi 4 and OnePlus One and also with Motorola Moto X Play. The MX5 is a good phone, resemblance to the iPhone notwithstanding. It is responsive, performs well in most tasks, has minimal bloatware, a good camera for daylight shooting, good build and battery life. The multi-purpose home button is an interesting concept and Meizu executes it well. If we were to look at the flaws, they would be the average quality low light photographs, the unoptimised fonts on the default theme and the fact that you will have to spend some time getting used to operating the user interface, if you are not familiar with it. Sure, the Moto X Play also offers a wonderful performance and at Rs 19,999 you are getting a 32GB variant. So if you want a phone which gives you the familiar feel of Android Lollipop - go for the Moto X Play. If you want to try something new, and are willing to invest time learning a new user interface go for the Meizu MX5.