Meizu M1 Note review: is it possible to switch to Android after iOS?

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Here we are all about Apple and mostly about Apple. We praise, scold a little for mistakes, “crooked” iOS 8 and sarcastically about Android. “Did you yourself hold new devices with a green robot in your hands? They became much better already a hundred years ago! - readers may exclaim. And in a sense they will be right: they kept it for a long time, they did not see new chips. It's time to rectify the situation. And as a guinea pig in our review will be Meizu M1 Note from the already gaining popularity of the Chinese company.

Why?

Let's immediately determine why this particular device was chosen. Of course, design played an important role here. Agree, if you look at the photos, it looks very much like an iPhone. Secondly, the smartphone has appeared on the market not so long ago, which means that it has not yet become obsolete. Finally, price is one of the overwhelming factors when comparing Apple products with competitors.

How?

I will not pretend to be an Android expert, but will act as an ordinary, average user who knows what a smartphone is, understands the differences between iOS and a system from Google, and also distinguishes gigabytes from gigahertz. Let's imagine that I just decided to change the Apple smartphone to another, and now I am describing my impressions of this transition.

Specifications

Let's first take a look at the “insides” of the device. In terms of dimensions, it falls between the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. Its height is 150, 7 mm, width - 75, 2 mm, thickness - 8, 9 mm, and weight - 145 grams. Slightly more compact than the "older" iPhone 6 Plus, a little more than the usual "six". The capacity of the rechargeable battery under the plastic cover is 3140 mAh, and the storage capacity is 16 or 32 GB to choose from.

The diagonal of the display is 5.5 inches with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. Glass - Gorilla Glass 3. Installed matrix - IGZO from Sharp.

The Meizu M1 Note has an MT6752 octa-core processor (ARM Cortex-A53 1.7 GHz x8), a 700 MHz Mali T760 MP2 GPU and 2 GB of LPDDR3 RAM - not bad considering the price of the device.

Regarding various sensors, there are no innovations, everything is standard: Wi-Fi 802.11 a / b / g / n, Bluetooth 4, compass, gyroscope, light sensor and more. But regarding the types of networks, there are some differences: GSM / GPRS / EDGE (900 / 1800MHz), WCDMA / HSPA + (900 / 2100Mhz) and, of course, LTE (1800/2100 MHZ Band 1, 3, 38, 41). And it is in this very LTE that the differences lie. The fact is that at the moment, judging by the forums, 4G networks of this standard are supported only by one of the operators - MTS. Therefore, before buying, it is better to ask your operator if a smartphone is right for you if you decide to use LTE.

Appearance

No, no, let's abstract.:)

The box, I must say, is made quite strange, in the form of a book. Moreover, it opens only once: having cut the "seal", the second time you will not completely close the box, the lid will simply dangle.

Inside the box are a smartphone, a USB data cable, an outlet plug, and an instruction booklet. The cable is folded and wrapped in a cardboard wrap, inside which is a clip for the SIM card tray.

Meizu M1 Note itself is very similar to smartphones from Apple. Here, one cannot do without an explicit comparison, no matter how hard you try. The front panel is entirely covered with glass, and the bottom is a single touch-sensitive Home button. The back cover, made of plastic, looks more like a specific model - iPhone 5c. In our case, it is white, but there are also blue, yellow, green and pink options.

As I mentioned above, the smartphone is only available with a limited amount of memory - 16 or 32 GB - and cannot be expanded. Therefore, it is better to immediately think about how much data you will operate on, and choose a model "by size". On the right side there is a tray for SIM-cards (yes, there are two of them), which can be opened with a paper clip included in the package. However, there is quite an interesting story with SIM-cards. You can use one or two SIM cards, but only one of the slots - the near one - supports 3G, WCDMA and GSM, while the far one is exclusively GSM.

Camera

As befits a modern smartphone, the Meizu M1 Note is equipped with two cameras: the main one with 13 megapixels and the front one with 5 megapixels. There is nothing unusual in either one or the other: they shoot mediocre. But they have a lot of settings, including those unnecessary for the vast majority of users. For example, the front camera can tint your lips with lipstick for an even more beautiful selfie. This is helped by Face After Effects technology, which defines the outlines of the face, eyes and lips.

The front camera, in addition to ordinary shots, can take panoramas, square photos and … has a dozen more modes similar to each other. Video shooting is carried out only at 30 frames per second. Check out the gallery, the pictures will speak for themselves.

Hi Andrew

Now let's see how the device behaves in real conditions and examine the operating system interface.

As we already know, Meizu is a company from China, which means that familiar (or rather completely unfamiliar) hieroglyphs are found already at the first turn-on. Although the smartphone is sold officially in Russia, the localization of many menu items is "lame", sometimes on both legs. And it's not only about the incomprehensible Chinese characters, but also about the spelling.

Well, God bless them, the Russian language is difficult for the Chinese. The main thing is that the phone is turned on and working. The first step is to connect your Google account so that Google Play becomes available (I remember this from the days of my first tablet with Android 2.2) and other services. But - in the connected accounts - in the settings there is also its own cloud from Meizu - Flyme (on behalf of the OS - Flyme OS, its own shell for Android), in which it is proposed to make backups, synchronize contacts and settings. Simply put, everything is the same as in iCloud, only there are ten times more space. By default, 10 GB is available, but after activation and authorization of the account, they can be increased up to 1 TB.

If you go through the settings, you can find interesting and unusual things for iOS. For example, there is a shop with themes. Directly from the settings item, you can go to Meizu's own digital content section and download or buy the theme you like. It should be noted that the choice is really large, and the most interesting design styles are exclusively paid. But you can try any of the themes in trial mode: after installation, you will have 5 minutes to decide whether this design suits you or not.

I was also interested in the "Driver Assistance" setting. According to the description, the enabled option should pronounce the name or number of the subscriber when a call comes in. In fact, a woman's voice begins to chatter something in an incomprehensible language. Of course, I am not a linguist, but this long speech does not at all look like numbers.

Software wrapper

I think it's no secret that for the operating system from Google, you can create not only your own applications, but also the so-called launchers - alternative workspaces in which all your applications, widgets and other distinctive features, such as transition animations from one desktop to another.

Initially, the Meizu M1 Note has Flyme OS, a proprietary launcher, which, apparently, should be a symbiosis of iOS and Android, taking the best from both systems. If you also buy a special theme for iOS in the app store, you can get a sort of iPhone on Android. At least it will look similar.

Flyme OS tries to be similar and at the same time different from iOS. The menu structure, icons, and others, but strongly resemble those from Apple's operating system. Interaction with the system is also quite similar, although I think you can go to the desktop by pressing the Home button everywhere. But when you hold down the button, the "Chinese Siri" pops up, which mutters exclusively in its own language, regardless of which one is chosen for it or the system (by the way, there is no Russian there). For some reason, a screenshot of this window is not taken, so I had to do with a regular photo.

The launcher itself works quickly, does not slow down, the menu remains responsive even after a week of use. But the "curve" localization and the inoperative Siri clone quickly kill all the desire to use the standard shell. But on Android it doesn't matter, you can always install something else!:)

Synchronization

Do you know what is the funniest part of the dispute between Android and iOS? All these pros, cons of one or the other system, in fact, boil down to one thing … As strange as it may sound, the advantage of iOS is its closed nature, and Android is open.

It is because of these factors that everyone loves one platform so much and scorns the other. They are the stumbling block and the subject of a lot of controversy like "Which is better: Android or iOS?" It is believed that the closed system from Apple gives developers more opportunities to optimize their software, and the user - additional protection from viruses and stable operation of applications and games. And the openness of the system from Google - rich opportunities to customize not only the interface, but anything you like.

But back to the process of learning about a smartphone. We have a Google account set up, Google Play is available to us, a SIM card is inserted. There remains only one problem - contacts. Although where could there be a problem? I unloaded the contact card and imported it into a new device. Strange, but it doesn't work.

At first, because I was lazy, I tried to slip the downloaded card directly into my Google account via the web, but after going through a dozen different pages and finally reaching the desired menu with contacts, I was disappointed. "The import is complete," the system wrote to me and gave me … an empty list. No contacts were imported. Well, it doesn't matter, then let's try to do a simple operation by connecting the smartphone to the computer via a USB cable. We insert, select the connection mode and slip the card with contacts. A few seconds and … the only one, the first contact is imported.

I tried to recreate the card, re-upload it both to the account and to the smartphone itself - all to no avail. Why it didn't work - I don't know. Is there any alternative method - too. Digging into the settings and Google had no interest. Therefore, having finished with the transfer of contacts, I decided to move on to more pressing matters.

Customization

Having tinkered a lot with the settings, I decided that the standard Flyme OS shell did not suit me. Siri does not want to talk to me when I try to find information on the Internet, although the Chinese characters do not interfere much, but the eyes are an eyesore. Therefore, in order for the services to suit me, I decided to change the standard launcher to the one provided by Google.

Having found it in the Play Market, I, without thinking twice, installed everything that was required, but … When I launched the launcher from Google, he asked me to go to the device's settings, delete the data of the installed launcher, and then set a new one by default. Having found out where this could be done, I came across the following problem: the data of the Flyme OS launcher cannot be deleted, which means that a third-party cannot be installed. To hell with him - climbed to read the forums. And I came across a solution to the problem: first you need to uninstall all applications from Google (Gmail, an already installed launcher, and so on), then - put the Google launcher, the search offered by it, and some other plugin. Only after that it will be possible to change one shell to another. Well, and after that - install the remote applications. Class!

Third party software

And here we move on to the most interesting: applications that are available in the Play Market from other developers. There are many different utilities, games, books and films in the app store, and that's good. So I decided to start testing those that I already know: Telergam, Google Maps, Yandex. Navigator, Google Music (instead of iTunes Match) - and added a couple of games to them: Electronic Arts' UFC and Real Racing 3.

Regarding applications. Everything is more or less the same here, except for Telegram, which has a bunch of some additional settings that are even responsible for what, since enabling and disabling them does not lead to anything at all. And the saddest thing is notifications. I honestly tried to find a setting so that, like in iOS, the push arrives and remains in the Notification Center. Whatever I chose, a huge chunk of the message appears on the display (if there is a picture, then its preview). It is convenient, you can answer without going into Telegram itself, but the fact that people standing next to you can see the picture is bad. In addition, on the icon of the application itself, there is no way to turn on the counter of missed messages. Yes, even if chat or contact notifications are enabled. That is, if there is a correspondence in one of the chats, you will not know about it until you open the application itself.

Now let's move on to the games. or are absent in the Play Market, as they are exclusive to iOS. Therefore, it was impossible to compare the graphics of some of the best representatives of the genres. But we managed to find UFC and Real Racing with a good graphic component, which means that you can look at them.

By the way, the graphics in these games are not inferior to their iOS counterparts, but there are cosmetic problems. For example, on the start screen in the UFC, the entire text information does not fit, and in Real Racing, the letters in the menu crawl out of the screen. This is extremely rare, but nonetheless.

The performance is good. Nothing slows down, FPS does not sag. It just seemed that loading the game sometimes takes a little longer than on iOS.

An attempt to start two games alternately (first UFC and then RR) after a couple of minutes leads to the crash of one of them. If you start with a different order, only the racing arcade crashes when you switch to it from a fighting game. In other words, two "heavy" applications cannot run at the same time. Even a couple of minutes.

If we consider other applications, then the situation has not changed much since I got the first tablet, in my opinion. Even official apps with a good rating and a "Suitable for your device" icon may crash for no reason or not launch at all. A striking example of this is the application from the bank "Promsvyazbank", which has four out of five stars rating and the most popular comment that it "does not open".

Outcome

As I wrote at the very beginning, I tried to approach the review from the point of view of a novice user or "switcher" on Android. I did not specifically look for the flaws of the system and the smartphone, I just wanted to use them. Unfortunately, some emerging problems required studying the forums, and not the most user-friendly user interface did not always make it clear what exactly I was doing wrong (it turns out that applications transferred from the desktop to the trash are not completely deleted, this action must be repeated in the "All applications ").

Among the advantages of the device, one can note a decent iron filling, a good, bright display and sufficient performance (I did not observe any noticeable brakes during the test).

The battery lasts for two days, however, under moderate loads. If you do not play games, but use your smartphone to solve all everyday tasks, without turning off 3G / Wi-Fi / GPS and so on, he will live from morning to evening. But not more.

By the way, USB charging is damn slow. If the battery can be charged from the mains in 3–3, 5 hours, then from the computer - overnight, in 6–8 hours. So it goes.

Take or not take, that is the question

I would not want to give advice on this matter or consider situations a la "here instead of the iPhone 4s - the very thing if there is not enough for the" six "." This is a different system with its own interesting solutions (well, yes, "Okay, Google!") And flaws. With its pros and cons. It has the right to exist. If you have a mom, daughter, grandmother, friend, colleague, mother-in-law or brother prefers a green robot, then you can change your old smartphone to the new Meizu M1 Note. But if a person is used to iOS, everything is much more complicated. But the choice, as always, is yours!:)