Meizu M2

The m2 will seem instantly familiar to anyone who’s seen the m2 note. MEIZU has opted for an almost identical design, with a polycarbonate back panel and rounded edges. The compact device is comfortable to use single-handed, with the curved edges ensuring a firm grip. The texture of the rear panel also ensures that smudges and scratches aren't easily visible.   The front of the smartphone features the 5-inch display, with the earpiece, front camera, sensors and notification LED placed above. Below the screen you’ll find just MEIZU's proprietary mBack button. The button responds to both capacitive and physical touch, with the former serving the return function and the latter taking you to the homescreen. Around the edges, the power button and volume rocker are placed on the right, the 3.5mm audio jack on top, and the primary microphone, micro-USB port and loudspeaker grill at the bottom. The left side features an ejectable tray that houses two nano SIM cards, with the second slot doubling up as a microSD card slot. Our review unit came in a matte grey colour, but it’s also available in white. The back panel features the primary camera and LED flash on top and MEIZU branding at the bottom. 

The m2 features a 5-inch display with HD resolution, resulting in a pixel density of 294ppi. Unlike its predecessor, which didn’t incorporate any protective coating above the display panel, the m2 note gets a layer of Asahi Dragontrail glass. The screen offers decent viewing angles, although visibility under bright sunlight is questionable. The screen is smooth and responsive to touch, and fine for typing, gaming and gestures alike. While colours appeared bright and true-to-life, you can adjust the colour temperature to your liking in display settings.

Handling photography on the m2 is a 13MP primary camera with a Samsung CMOS sensor, a 5-element lens and a f/2.2 aperture. The front camera is a 5MP fixed-focus unit. The camera app is a simple affair with the shutter button and controls for the video and gallery on one side. Next to these are another set of buttons for the camera settings, front camera toggle, filters and flash. To switch between the camera modes, you just need to swipe down on the viewfinder. The modes on offer include Auto, Manual, Beauty, Panorama, Light field (lets you refocus the subject after you shoot), Scan (for scanning QR codes) and Slowmotion. We were very impressed with the image quality on the MEIZU m2 note, but unfortunately, its little sibling doesn’t live up to expectations. In broad daylight, you can achieve good results with regard to macro shots, with a realistic depth of field effect and plenty of detail. Wider shots taken in daylight are perfectly usable, although you won’t find the same level of detail when you zoom in. Indoors, and in lower lighting conditions though, images suffer from an influx of noise. The flash solves the noise issue, but bathes images in a whitish hue which is far from flattering. The front camera can churn out decent selfies outdoors in daylight, but again, delivers noisy results when lighting conditions are poor.For a realistic idea of what the camera offers, take a look at these unedited camera samples captured in full auto mode.

 The MEIZU m2 runs Android 5.1 Lollipop with Flyme OS 4.5 on top. We’ve talked about the limitations of Flyme in our m2 note review, and it seems like MEIZU hasn’t done much to address these issues. Our chief complaints, such as the lack of the standard Google app suite, the presence of Chinese content, abruptly cut-off text and grammatical errors still exist, and need to be rectified soon if MEIZU expects to gain traction in India.We won’t repeat the finer details of what Flyme brings, but let’s recap nonetheless. Flyme OS, like its Chinese counterparts, lacks an app drawer, and features modified icons. The mutli-tasking pane can be brought up by swiping up from the base of the screen. The only Google apps you’ll find preloaded on the device are Maps and the Play Store, which means you’ll need to download basic apps like Chrome, Hangouts, Drive, Gmail, YouTube, etc manually. MEIZU’s own AppCenter comes preloaded on the international version of Flyme for some reason, but it’s pointless because it has only Chinese content. Even the Personalize app, where you can download various themes and wallpapers is in Chinese. The only useful addition is Security Center, which offers a junk cleaner, app uninstaller, traffic manager, virus cleaner, permission manager and power saving mode. Flyme also comes with support for various gestures, such as double tap to wake, and the ability to draw letters or perform gestures to open apps from the lockscreen. There’s also a floating button called SmartTouch which can be programmed to perform various functions depending on how you interact with it.

CPU:  Quad core, 1.3 GHz, MediaTek ...GPU: Mali-T720 MP2RAM: 2 GBMemory: 16 GB + Up to 128 GBSIM Slots: Dual SIM , GSM+GSMBattery: 2500 mAH