Gadgetory

Android users have always had a variety of options when it comes to their handheld devices manufacturers like Samsung HTC and LG dominate our landscape but with the oneplus one the consumer has now seen that there are viable high-end alternatives to their brand-name counterparts that have the hardware to compete with their more expensive brethren one such device is the meizu mx4 this is the successor to last year's mx3 and it features a host of hardware and software upgrades to satisfy users increasing tastes for better mobile devices can the meizu mx4 measure up to the competition we're going to find out in today's review hi everybody this is brian fury for android authority and this is the meizu mx4 immediate impressions of the phone are that it is very Apple like overall the design is very clean and aesthetic and it is extremely close to Apple's design language the build is overall sturdy and the phone will be available in grey silver and gold the device is slightly weighted which gives it a much more quality feel but the plastic bag keeps it from feeling very premium the device is slippery to the touch and more than once I had a drop scare with it coming out of my pocket the phone is crafted from aircraft grade aluminum featuring it around the edges and in the frame the buttons are also made of aluminum and the clicks feel very solid especially with the volume rocker however the power button sits a little low and can get lost in top of the frame the power button on top feels very awkward for a phone of the size where the standard is a side mounted button the plastic back is rounded and has a nice satin feel which holds well in the hand however on this review unit it doesn't sit very flush with the sides and there are slight gaps around the edges it also tends to creak under pressure a little bit and the gaps in the corners feel kind of awkward when you're holding it the company logo on the back plastic is unobtrusive and understated the camera position on the back is a prominent feature with a large glass element occupying the top of the rear case beneath the back cover it lies its non removable 3100 milliamp battery and a micro SIM slot there is no micro SD card slot and the review unit is available in the 32 gig size the front does feature Corning Gorilla Glass 3 which is durable and responsive speaking of the Gorilla Glass 3 it comes to us in a 5.3 6-inch display which technically shows at 1080p however the actual resolution is 1920 by 1152 this yields us a wonderful pixel per inch of 418 this causes images to look really really sharp the display is almost bezu list with 0.2 millimeters on the side and it features a capacitive touch home button on the very bottom of the phone the device does give us on-screen buttons for the rest overall the size feels really comfortable in the hand and it's very useful for entertainment and productivity YouTube videos are very clean and crisp and they string really easily the aspect ratio is a little bit odd and some applications do have problems displaying on it text is crisp and extremely sharp on the colors that are reproduced on-screen are very clean and don't appear to be oversaturated at all there is a little problem with some games and applications being displayed with different color sets on this unit than I've seen on other devices viewing in direct sunlight is pretty good when the auto just works properly otherwise if you set the brightness manually that is the best way to overcome ambient light overall the performance of this unit is very good a start-up of devices very fast and there's no noticeable lag moving between the screens the device does have some cool gestures which are quick wake up you do get to double tap on the screen and it'll light up the lockscreen if you swipe down it'll show notifications if you swipe up it will unlock the phone and if you swipe left you'll open the camera swipe to the right is programmable to the application of your choice notifications are fullscreen and it is easy to access additional controls on the notification panel by swiping down and that when the notification screen is open notifications do show up with simple icons in the top left but anything other than a text message is a mystery until you swipe down on the home screens you do get big clear icons that are clean with sharp edges the 1080p provides an excellent viewing experience and the external speaker is actually really good for a handheld device you do get a loud sound which is pretty clear and cool but the bottom firing speaker does leak some audio when he don't really want it to while the external speaker is loud the earpiece speaker does deliver low volume even when you're at the maximum settings while quality is good and people I called had no problem hearing me with the device I was able to get about a full day of usage with moderate to slightly heavy activity but this is slightly disappointing for a 3100 milliamp battery I feel like it should have been able to handle at least a day and a half or a day and a quarter without me having to go ahead and recharge it there is no app drawer and multitasking is handled by swiping up from the bottom however you can only see eight applications at a time there is also only one capacitive touch button and for this size of phone I might have liked the few more additionally the keyboard does not autocorrect or autofill this greatly slows down typing for me at least because I have to keep going back and correcting my errors it is also pretty hard to type single handedly on a screen this large however this could be remedied by installing a different keyboard the fly me keyboard is okay but it doesn't have swipe and it is not easy to switch between letters and numbers the hardware available on the phone is actually really decent for a phone this price the hardware package on this phone is actually pretty robust you do get a mediatek octa-core chipset featuring two quad-core processors a 2.2 gigahertz cortex a 17 and a 1.7 gigahertz cortex a7 the GPU is a power vrg 6200 and you do get a 3100 milliamp battery wireless duties are handled by an 802 11 AC card and the phone is available with 16 32 or 64 gigabytes of onboard memory there is a single sim card slot on it and there are LTE antennas however they're only for China a noticeable exclusion is the micro SD card slot this does seem standard for high performance low cost phones one noticeable example is the oneplus one during gaming there are some interesting things that show up I noticed some slowdowns while I was playing spider-man unlimited and it also displayed a lot darker graphics than I have seen on other devices cars faster than lightning has great performance but I saw some mister on and first wiping games it eats really easy to hit the home hallo button the top half of the phone does get pretty hot to the touch when doing processor intensive activities like gaming or heavy internet usage overall the increased number of cores does not necessarily create a faster device and it doesn't really feel any different than any of the phones that feature Qualcomm top-tier chips camera duties are handled by a twenty point seven megapixel Sony Exmor unit with a dual LED flash the camera aperture maximum is F 2.2 and the dual LED is to help with accurate colors during flash situations the camera software is easy to use and has tons of options you only need to swipe left and right to access all the different shooting settings you do get a 2 megapixel front-facing camera for pretty good selfies this 2 megapixel shooter is of good quality but it struggles in low-light image quality from the main camera is sharp with a lot of light however the image is lack the vibrant pop and saturation of some of the other cameras on the market the autofocus motor is a little bit noisy and does take a second to focus properly additionally it also refocuses after every shot so when you're taking pictures you do want to make sure and take a second before every single shot that you take also of note is that in low-light conditions the camera does struggle a little bit and it hunts for focus quite a bit noticeable features of the phone camera are the panorama feature there's 4k video 120 frames per second slow-motion face beauty mode night mode macro mode HDR functionality and a plethora of manual controls there are also a bunch of filters and hold-your-breath there's actually a barcode reader built into the camera software overall the camera's best during daylight and if you're using it willing it out and about it is actually a really great camera but if you're indoors or in low-light situations you may want to make sure people are under good light sources finally the operating system came in the flavor of fly me 4.0 this operating system is specific to meizu and it is simple and colorful it is arguable that it is very Apple esque it seems that they were going for a less is more concept however it did feel like the Android user experience was slightly crippled by trying to simplify an already simple operating system often times it was frustrating to see that things were not normally where they were and it didn't feel necessarily intuitive to navigate the settings a glaring flaw for customizers would be the inability to install different launchers so the users are stuck with the experience of the fly me operating system while it is clean and pleasant the lockdown OS brought a few problems to the table it appeared that there was buggy software my sample unit any of the Google apps were not initially installed in fly me 4.0 and you were stuck was trying to deal with the fly me App Store there was supposed to be an update that greatly overhauls this user experience and pre-installed google play services certain apps like the weather application app center and voice assistant are optimized for the Chinese market and if you don't speak Chinese you're going to have a really hard time navigating any of that stuff most applications including the operating system are not necessarily optimized for the 5 to 3 aspect ratio additionally the unit would not automatically adjust its time based on my carrier data after some light usage initially all my apps stopped working and then randomly overnight the Google Play Store app started working and all the rest of my apps were ok I wish I could give you a better idea of what happened there but it was as if they magically started working overnight it felt like a lot of the settings were not where they should be expected and the layout felt a little awkward when I was navigating it English translations of certain phrases were entertaining most notable being the don't cover top of phone when unlocked bug which materialized every once in a while when trying to unlock my phone setting up my Google account on the phone required an installation of the Google Play services through the fly me app center in addition setting up all of my google apps was not a smooth experience and required a lot of patience and me reinstalling the apps multiple times even after setting things up properly the apps were often saying that my Google account could not be immediately accessed also slightly annoying was the fact that the volume buttons did not change the ringer volume they only changed the music volume so if I wanted to mute the sound I would have to go through and go into the notifications menu to meet my phone app handling and multi app use was slightly cumbersome as well and there were multiple occasions when apps would get stuck after pausing to go to another application and I would have to manually close the app in the app manager the majority of the time this happened with games and finally many applications would quit during loading sequences most notably Instagram during videos to wrap it all up at a low price point of four hundred and thirty four dollars on Amazon for the 32 gigabyte model the meizu mx4 offers a lot for your money it's combination of an octa-core processor with a large and beautiful screen make it especially appealing for immediate consumption productivity would be aided by a new keyboard and outside of the oddities that popped up during testing with the OS fly me is pretty livable and especially if it was improved with their latest rom if the routing and modding community expands for this device there would also be a lot of potential for power users to get even more out of the phone overall the phone is an excellent package and a great alternative to many of the other phones that are out there the fact that this is a Chinese market phone means that very very few people in the US will have it and that means it would be pretty exclusive if you did if you're willing to look past the blemishes of this device it is a unique and powerful handheld that is excellent for media consumption and entertainment as well as the international traveler if you liked this video feel free to click like and subscribe below otherwise I'll see you next time