vvzvlad February 25, 2013 at 06:28

Meizu MX2 - subjective impressions after a month of use

This Monday, on our long-suffering table, we will see the rising star of Chinese telephony - Meizu MX2.

Quad processor Exynos 4412 , operating at frequencies up to 1.6GHz

2GB RAM

16/32 / 64GB user memory

Screen 4.4 ", with a resolution of 1280x800 PPI - 343.

2 chamber: rear 8Mp , auto-focus, LED lights and front 2MP

Flyme OS 2.0.5 (based on Android 4.1) 1800mAh

battery

This will not be an ordinary review. Rather, it is a review-impression after a month of using the MX2 as the main phone. Under the cut - a lot of subjective impressions, thoughts on the convenience of the phone, and as usual - a lot of photos.

Packaging and equipment

A box of very dense white cardboard:

Compared with the packaging of china phones, and brands - very concise. On the top surface there is only an inscription. On the side - tamper control:

Which somewhat spoils the impression of a completely white box. Moreover, all PCT boxes are opened to replace the charger and update the firmware. On the back there is a bit of information about the phone:

And a sticker with a barcode and serial numbers.

Open the box. we see a charger with a standard USB output, a little inappropriate in shape to the recess. Apparently this was the effect of replacing the complete charge, designed for the Chinese market, with a version suitable for Russian outlets.

In addition to charging, the package contains a “book” of puff cardboard:

On one side of which, under the cover, there is a telephone:

And on the other hand, also, under the cover - the rest of the equipment:

Actually, all the contents of the box are in this book, except for charging. I think if you get a little squeezed, the charger would also fit in there.

Everything else in the box is empty space. A lot of empty space, almost half the volume: A

strange decision. It seems to me that a small box on the contrary would add a “wow effect”.
So, the equipment:

Not too rich, but quite useful. USB-MicroUSB cable:

Nice, plump, suitable for the design of the phone. White, unlike a charger. Manual and guarantee in good Russian:

Piece (do not know how to call it a key.?) To open the phone's casing:

The key is to be inserted into the hole and ~~turn~~ squeeze ~~the phone~~ lock, and some take it in this state to the side, so as to form a gap:

Then we need sidewall key (well, , so it’s supposed. This is done perfectly with the fingernail) held along the slit around the entire perimeter of the phone to completely detach the cover.
Two stickers on a SIM card of a regular size (after cropping along the dotted line, the card turns into MicroSIM), and an adapter for the reverse conversion - we insert MicroSIM into it, after which it can be inserted into the slot for a regular card:

By the way, it’s quite convenient - we paste the template :

Crop:

And paste into the phone:

It is inserted by the way, up the contact pad. I stupid a little the first time, then guessed to look at the case - there of course it was painted how to insert correctly. The sticker can be glued and peeled off several times, if for the first time it was applied crookedly, it peels off without a trace and stickiness, which is nice.
Packaging and picking for: 7 points out of 10
Not bad, I like it. Everything you need in the kit is there, and even if the template and the SIM card adapter cost a penny, it’s very nice to put them in. We will write a strange decision with an empty place in the box to the designer. There are no headphones, but I do not consider this a minus. At Meizu, looking back at their audience, in which a high percentage of people, say, with increased sound requirements, decided not to support the food chain “complete headphones - a garbage can”, they did not complete the phone with headphones. Like, you’ll still be dissatisfied, it’s better to use your headphones, or buy a branded headset, but with normal quality. In my opinion, the right decision is that those who use headphones over $ 100 will not even use a headset of good quality, and those who are satisfied with cheap headphones will not understand the difference - two-thirds of users will not care about a headset, but the price will increase. And so the wolves are intact, and the sheep are full - whoever wants a branded headset buys it, who does not want it — does not buy it.
But the comments are still unhappy. There are headphones in the kit - “why put it, throw this shit out anyway”, no headphones - “here are manufacturers’s misfortunes, pity on the kit.” But we all understand what the reason for this decision is, and we won’t say so, right?

Build Quality and Appearance

The phone looks very interesting and catchy, you can’t call it a brick in any way - more like a pebble, or even pebble - a heavy, small one, pleasantly lying in your hand. At the same time, it cannot be said that it is all smooth, which Samsung designers sin - not a single sharp corner, everything is smooth and round. The hand perfectly clings to the edge of the screen, and the phone lies in the hand well. It is small in size, and I think it will be small for large hands.

When the phone lies on a flat surface, an interesting impression is formed - neither the side edges nor the back cover are visible, only the black rectangle of the front panel. When turned off, the screen is neither color nor specular from the rest of the panel - just a black rectangle with rounded edges.

If you look closely, at the top you can see a small grid of the speaker, and next to it is a gleaming camera window. A little further there is a hole for the light and proximity sensor, but to notice it, you need to look very closely.

Here is what is very noticeable - the “gap” in the monolithic frame, the insert of another material. I don’t know why this was done, maybe something related to the antenna. But the look constantly clings to this insert, and spoils the impression of a solid design.

Below is a single touch button with a luminous rim. Somewhere inside, it is covered with a luminous composition, and it can be seen for quite a while in the dark. It looks unusual, but does not carry much value - it’s quite difficult to miss the only button. Find a phone on a desk at night? So the button does not glow so long - a couple of hours, no more.
But the trick is cool, I have not seen touch buttons with light accumulators in any phone yet.

We turn the phone over:

At the bottom there is a MicroUSB connector, a key hole, a microphone and a speaker:

On the side there is a volume rocker made of the same two-layer plastic as the back cover. In the center of the back cover is the camera eye:

On the upper edge is a second noise reduction microphone, a headphone jack, and a power button.

There is nothing more remarkable in appearance; we have talked about two-layer plastic more than once, so I won’t repeat it.
Appearance on: 9 points out of 10
~~I won’t tell you for all Odessa~~ , of course, all the felt-tip pens are different in taste and color, but I liked the look very much - a slight roundness of edges is combined with sharp edges of the screen frame, and the phone itself seems very small and miniature.

Screen

After a certain limit, describing the shortcomings and advantages of the screens somehow made no sense - all the screens of phones with a price slightly above $ 200 had excellent viewing angles, the correct colors, which are not inverted when tilted. The MX2 screen differs only in very high PPI - as much as 343.

Only a few phones with 1080p climbed above. In practice, this is expressed in the complete inability of the eye, how not to look closely, to see pixelation in the picture with a resolution equal to or higher than the screen resolution.
The viewing angles are excellent:

It is no different from other IPS screens:

The bigger one is THL W3.

At maximum brightness, the screen is quite visible in the sun - there are no problems in this regard.
Screen on: 10 points out of 10
I have no complaints about the screen; I am omnivorous in this regard. You do not need to process photos on it, prepare it for printing, too, but I cannot think of other tasks that require 100% correct color display. There are no obvious blockages in the direction of one or another color, and okay. But despite all this, the screen is very good, bright, clear, with the right colors, not inferior to other screens of the same category.

Characteristics, working hours.

No, there will not be tests. They can be found in many other reviews of phones, links to which can be found at the end of the article. And the processor is not something new and unknown - Exynos 4412 will definitely not slow down.
As for the operating time - the battery, although there are not enough stars from the sky, fully provides 1 day of work in active mode, and a couple of days in the "phone + occasionally check mail" mode. Oh, there would be a bigger battery - it would be generally wonderful.
Characteristics for: 8 points out of 10
As expected from a device on such a processor, everything works very smartly and does not slow down. But the battery life is not happy - more than a standard day for android active work failed to go.

Photo and video

The camera is a good, strong middling. In the first firmware there were terrifying glitches with focus, as a result, all the frames were noticeably blurry. Starting with 2.0.5, this problem was fixed, and the camera became very good. Macro also shoots normally. Colors do not float, all is well. The camera passes the test with a sheet of paper. Able to shoot panoramas. Good resolution, but lousy quality. So, a bonus. Photos and video on: 6 points out of 10 A completely good camera, at least noticeably better than most Chinese.

Flyme OS

I have a somewhat mixed attitude towards Flyme OS. It cannot be said that she doesn’t like it at all, but it’s hard to call me completely satisfied. On the one hand, compared with a bare android, there are many advantages and amenities, but some of these changes do not logically fit the existing paradigm of using android. But what not to take away from Flyme - it is quite stylish and comfortable. If you really use the phone as a telephone , and not use it as a browser screen, then it is quite convenient to work in it.
It can be seen that they really worked on it - both in terms of “licking”, and in terms of new functions. On the one hand, it does not look like Android at all, at first glance it seems that this is a completely different system, and on the other hand, the programs work, the applications run - you don’t need to migrate anywhere and lack applications. In general, I’m only for - more androids, good and different :)

Okay, now about the system itself:
After turning it on or a complete reset, we don’t need to go through a bunch of steps, like in a regular android, only the choice of language, after which it immediately appears desktop:

Of course, all the icons on it can be changed, except for one - the browser in the center of the bottom line.
The way programs are organized differs from both Andorid- and IPhone-style. There is no general list of programs, the installed program appears immediately on the last desktop. However, program icons do not go one after another - there can be as much free space between them (widgets are also supported by themselves). In my opinion, such work with icons requires unnecessary efforts if you are used to arranging the icons yourself, and not remembering where you are located. In iOS, when you delete an icon or move it to a folder, there is no empty space - all the following icons are shifted by one, and fill the freed space. Here the situation is different - if you remove the icon in a folder, then all other icons remain in their places.
After the start of use, I installed my standard set of programs, in which not all programs are used to run - some I use only as a widget, some are installed in the system, others are only needed to open files from TotalCommander, or to synchronize in the background. And I do not start part of the standard programs at all. Another part I run very rarely, a couple of times a month - 2GIS, teamviever, skype, viber, and I don’t want to see them on the desktop every day. Accordingly, I want to remove them into folders, depending on the need and frequency of launch. I create several folders on the first desktop, start dragging programs from the first desktop into them. Everything, the first is free. Now you need to transfer the remaining programs from the second desktop. I drag from the second. Now from the third. From the fourth. Each transfer is a chain of actions "go to the right desktop, find the right program, drag it to the first desktop, put it in the folder, go back to the desktop with the programs." By the way, more than 16 programs cannot be placed in a folder, so I created several folders - Unnecessary 1, Unnecessary 2, The rest 1, The rest 2, Internet 1, Internet 2 ...
In normal work, this does not really interfere - the icons of installed programs will appear from scratch in the current desktops, but during the first setup I sat for a long time.

Of course, you can install a third-party manager, but my favorite Nova Laucher got this line at the bottom of the screen:

How to remove it, I still could not find it.
In some windows, it integrates perfectly into the interface, and in some it is not very:

In the old version of FBReader, it generally covered part of the text:

But after updating to the latest version, this problem no longer occurred.

By the way, one of the features of the system is the ability to get Root rights, without any problems with the firmware - just from the phone menu. True, the Internet is still required. It is necessary to register a Flyme-account - it is registered without problems through the "registration" button:

And after entering the account in the "More" menu, the treasured item "Open access to the system" appears, with a formidable warning:

After pressing, the phone will reboot, and with every attempt to access you will receive an access request:

There is no “allow always” checkbox in the standard manager, but you can install Superuser from the market, and replace su with a normal one, with applications memorized.

The system can update by air:

During the time that I had the phone, the firmware was updated three times - to 2.0.5 and 2.0.6 official, and to2.1.1 test version. The first corrected problems with the camera - an autofocus error, in which the frames were a bit soapy, and the second and third - slightly increased the operating time. This makes me happy. I will not point a finger, but you will not get firmware updates from some companies, and some people prohibit updating by air outside their own region.

Another feature that claims to be a killer feature, but why it is undeservedly deprived of attention, is data synchronization with the Flyme server. To be honest, I don’t know if Google has synchronization with anything other than contacts, but it has everything - notes, contacts, messages, a list of calls, bookmarks and passwords in a standard browser, settings, calendar - everything is saved. In general, a nightmare of paranoid.

It acts like this - go to your account in the settings, enable full synchronization or select the necessary items. After some time, an icon in the form of two arrows appears in the status bar, which will be there for the first time for quite some time.

After resetting, flashing, buying a new phone, immediately enters your account on the first screen, and positively answer the question about data synchronization. The arrows will spin, and then the system will prompt you to restart the phone. After loading the system, all your data will be in its place, only you will have to re-enter your Google account by typing the password again - this is not Titanium, which drops everything that it finds into backup. Honestly, an awesome feature, for those who like to change firmware or devices - that's it. Sorry, limited only to Meizu phones.

By simultaneously pressing the "Power" + "Volume-" buttons, you can take a screenshot of the screen. Even on a locked screen, which is nice. By the way, in the lock mode, the connected charging is shown in a pleasant animation of the bubbles:

Yes, and the standard functions are well thought out - for example, password lock is combined with a pattern lock - you can press the number buttons to enter a password, or you can use them without lifting your finger.

Another interesting feature is the phone search. True, she has two problems - she is not looking for a phone, and the site is completely in Chinese. But the ability to remotely lock the phone, or turn on a nasty melody on it, is present.
The phone must have an active Flyme account and Internet access, of course. Go to flyme.meizu.com/flymap/flymap.jsp, and log in with the account name and password.

A map and two buttons appear in Chinese.

On the left - to start searching for the phone (a request is sent to the phone, it turns on GPS, and as soon as it determines the coordinates - it displays them on the map):

By the way, I found out that my wife took the phone to play and went to the market :)
Right - the menu of actions with the phone:

You can send a message, lock the phone, or turn on it at full volume very nasty music without the possibility of disconnection.

Apparently, this is in case you lost the phone in the room, or you pulled it out in a shopping center - when the thief did not go far. By the way, an important detail - the Flyme-account is attached once and for all to the phone, and changing it will not work anymore - just stop synchronizing. Moreover, even after flashing the locked phone can be used only without an Internet connection. Connecting it to Wifi, or inserting a SIM card with active Internet, after a while you will receive the same message “Phone is locked”, which can be removed only after entering the password of the first account.

Mentioning worthy of the possibility of automatic recording of calls and answering machine:

True, they are called a little strange - "Record conversations" is a record of conversations in a file, and "Record messages" is an answering machine.
They are located in the settings of the dialer:

The default answering machine message is English, but Russian is simple to do - write to a standard voice recorder, and then move this file to the sdcard / autoanswerrecord folder by the standard manager, calling it “user_start.mp3.”

By the way, manufacturers blocked the ability to see not only battery graph, but also the most active applications, as well as quite a lot of system settings. True, they can still be viewed by dialing * # * # 6961 # * # * in the phone application, after which several new items will appear in the settings.

ON: 7 out of 10
When I began to explain to my wife everything that I didn’t like about the shell, she didn’t understand why I was worried about such trifles. Maybe I snickered, or got used to the stock android. Or just want to be able to customize everything .
In my opinion, these are just two different approaches - “what I give, I use it” and “what does it mean, I can’t change the color of the icon ?!”. The first time after buying a new phone, I usually profess the second approach, and after a while it is inferior to the first. Interesting functions help me put up with this, which I have not seen analogues on Android smartphones.
In general, if you do not reflect on certain hard-set things that the end user cannot change, such as a browser in the center of the panel, or the lack of physical buttons and a back menu, then you can use it perfectly. Some live with one button. And that - without backlight.

Sound

I'm not an audiophile, not at all. I am amused by people who quite seriously buy inter-unit cables from oxygen-free copper, although for more than 10 years the oxygen content in the main brands of copper has not even been standardized - it is so small. I laugh at the sight of the green discs and the lamp, which only has a plug connected, mounted on top of the transistor amp.

No, of course, I am also exposed to the placebo effect, and when comparing expensive and cheap headphones, I probably will like the more expensive ones. But I understand that this is partially self-deception - at the level of "Yes, it seems to have become a little better." I always justified myself by saying that I was not an audiophile and could not say what it was better about. :)
That's about the same mood, I picked up the MX2 in order to listen to music on it. I had no doubt that something would be better, but to indicatewhich is exactly the best likely would not be able to. Yes, yes, a separate DAC from Wolfson Microelectronics - quite well-known in narrow and not very circles of the English manufacturer of audio electronics. Yes, everything is cool and top notch. Yes, yes, I will definitely note this in the review. Blah blah blah. Blah blah blah.

I pick it up, insert the headphones (by the way, these are the Philips THE SPECKED familiar to you , not noticed in the special sound qualities), I launch the player, select the track, play ... Oh.
I just stood outside in the snow and listened to a track so familiar and so different. I listened to these songs dozens of times, but still, they sounded completely different. I can’t describe all the sensations, but most of all it was like comparing the music that sounds from the phone in a public place and the personal presence at a concert or in the studio.
The track remained the same, but for some reason, for some reason, it was not the rhythmic mess of sounds that served as the background for the performer’s voice that was heard, but several completely different instruments that played completely distinctly and independently of each other.
There was absolutely a feeling of deja vu. True, the last time I felt such a difference in sound in a chair between 4 studio speakers, but not in the street, in cheap headphones. Honestly, I am delighted. What surprises me even more is that I can finally understand what they write so enthusiastically in audio reviews - all these clear panoramas of sound, precise localization, extra sound volume, excellent panning, and other beautiful words. This does not mean that I will now praise the phone with their use, no. I already described my feelings, and I really like it.

Sound on: 10 points out of 10
I liked. The only thing I ask about is do not believe me, and do not blindly take for granted what I wrote. All this is terribly subjective. Feeling disappointed is not as pleasant as feeling surprised. If the sound is not the last factor in choosing a phone for you, take good headphones, a couple of familiar tracks in Lossless (the stock player can play it), and find this phone before you buy it. I think you will be surprised.

Price:

On the official site price of the phone starts at 17,997 rubles for the 16-gigabyte version, and continues to 21,997 rubles for the version with 64 gigs of memory.