Globalization is a relative thing, and even in such a predictable lesson, like buying a mobile phone, people’s tastes differ. In the US citizens prefer to support the “domestic producers”, but even with their generous dollar salaries buy an iPhone at a discount and contract mobile operator. The South Koreans in addition to Apple products they buy Samsung and LG phones, and especially for them (and Japanese) brands produce androidofony folding bed. And in Japan it is customary not just to make a smartphone at a discount to the tariff of operator — the vast majority of smartphones, specifically designed for Telecom operators. And good smartphones, not those that we advertise jesters for money “Big three”.
What about China? And there is just a lot of everything, so to sum up the entire market under a common denominator we will not. But from local manufacturers the Chinese expect the same as the Russians: let not the steepness, but that was all so cheap. And bred a “trifle” among the brands fighting for the attention of the public with a special “anti-crisis” models from major vendors. Meizu, as a company that is experienced, has released for the Chinese market secmodel margin — M1 Metal will discourage customers from Xiaomi not less aggressive and smaller companies.
What the Chinese well, the Russian — now find out and figure out how to live, who emigrated from China mobile phones.
Meizu M1 Metal
Features
Meizu M1 Metal
Operating system
Android 5.1 Lollipop
Screen
5.5 inch, 1920×1080, IPS, 403 ppi
Processor
Helio X10 Mediatek MT6795 2 GHz (8 cores, Cortex-A53)
Graphics
PowerVR G6200
Operational memory
2 GB
Constant memory
16 GB, slot microSD
Link
4G (LTE Cat.4), 3G, Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11 b/g/n), Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, GLONASS
Camera
13 MP main with autofocus, video 1920×1080, the front — 5 MP
Battery
3140 mAh, non-removable
Sizes
150,7×75,3×8,2 mm
Weight
162 g
The price at the time of publication
14 000 rubles
Price according to price.EN
Design and management
Smartphones with cool stuffing for cheap not distinguished unique appearance, and Meizu M1 Metal on this part is no exception: it will resemble the iPhone (though modern iPhones look a little different), any model Meizu released earlier. But even with this basic data, the smartphone looks prettier than any competitor officially sold in Russia in the weight category “up to 15 thousand rubles”.
The front panel Meizu M1 Metal
Rear panel Meizu M1 Metal
The main “chip” model, the manufacturer calls an aluminum body, but neither in appearance, nor to touch the metal in the rear panel of the M1 Metal we found. Manufacturer coloring, like Samsung with their Galaxy A? It is unlikely, because in a few weeks of operation the paint near the Micro-USB connector is slightly rubbed and there is no “bucket” Shine on the spot of abrasion was not.
The right side and Meizu M1 Metal
Generally, with the thickness of any paint (and there are white, pink, grey, Golden, grey) modifications will be similar to the now fashionable frayed jeans. It is a pity, because the lid itself and not slippery and not easily soiled that today in smartphones is rare.
But a full face of crisis Meizu beautiful metal faces dance in the light, frames at the sides of the screen fine, the build is great and looks the phone is certainly more than worth it. The fingerprint scanner in the button under the screen was average quality: the Samsung Galaxy Note 4/S5 and ZTE Axon mini sensors work worse, but to the agility of the sensor in the iPhone 6s our hero away.
The top face of the Meizu M1 Metal
The left side is Meizu M1 Metal
The bottom face of the Meizu M1 Metal
Hybrid tray for a new bad tradition permits installation of two Nano-SIM cards or one Nano-SIM + Micro-SD card. But it’s good that a slot for a memory card generally is Phones of new models of it are generally clean and powder people brains excuses “you are dumb and buy a fake card, smartphones are buggy, and then we answer!”.
And Yes: Chinese 4G is slightly different in frequency with the Russian, so work on LTE speed the smartphone is not going to be in each area.
A pair of Nano-SIM or one SIM card and Micro SD — new bad tradition layout smartphones
The screen and sound
Almost any smartphone Meizu (except, perhaps, M2 mini) equipped with a high-quality display. In M1 Metal has very good Full HD IPS matrix with good viewing angles, a huge reserve of brightness (the display can be read even on a Sunny day) and accurate color reproduction.
Tempered glass is not covered by Dragontrail scratch even with rough use of a cell phone, oleophobic coating is good, so to clean the display from fingerprints very rarely.
Are the disadvantages and they are connected with a crooked white balance adjustment “from the factory”. The white color gives the smartphone a bluish tinge and, although in system settings you can adjust the color temperature, neutral color temperature from Meizu squeeze will not succeed.
The smartphone performed well on part of the sound in the headphones — even model with a resistance of 60 Ohms, it was able to “rock” to a very high volume level. The sound quality itself is trivial, so a good audio player with equalizer will not interfere, otherwise the sound will seem too clear, but from YouTube at high volume will soon start to ringing in ears.
But the speakerphone was average quality: ringtones clearly hear the screaming vocalist and the accompaniment sounds less legible and somewhere in the background.
Iron
Processor Mediatek Helio X10 — “the first guy in the village”. That is, competition with a truly elite chips Apple, Samsung or even Qualcomm Snapdragon failure he cannot stand, but smartphones with this osmeterium are reasonable money, and buyers accepting them for mediocre gaming performance and polyphagia under high load.
Processor speed test (Geekbench)
Gaming performance (the test 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited)
The performance of the entire system (test Antutu Benchmark 5.7)
In General, a normal processor for everyday tasks, comparable with rival Kirin in the army of the Huawei smartphones or Snapdragon 615/616/617. Power enough to not feel embarrassed in front of the owners of the flagships in the games a little more lush graphics and have stock on “tomorrow”.
By the way, about the stock RAM I would like to see more. Because 2 GB today — the average value, which is about to move from middle class in budget smartphones.
Software
In years past, when the Chinese forged a rollicking Nokia phones, the translated system looked so horribly that it would be better in its place was the English version. Now Google is investing in Android languages pack immediately, so many native Chinese smartphones are quite adequately translated for the Russian buyer.
But one thing — “the naked Android” and the other system YunOS (normal matovski Flyme OS with tuning from the owners of Aliexpress), which is a relatively basic version of the system altered almost everything. A single Central key for the commands “home” and “back”, the specific design of the menu and a completely different set of applications (contacts, browser, settings, audio player) does not bring the smartphone is fully on Russian language. Partial Russification to carry the can — after that Meizu Metal will cease to consider yourself an Englishman (Google Play, alarm clock, audio player, messages and anything you install later will be in English) and they can be quite comfortable to use.
Interface Android 5.1 Meizu M1 Metal
The pre-installed software on the smartphone little, Semple, who came to us from Gearbest, it has already been installed Google Play, but syncing contacts us to establish and failed — Meizu in China promotes its own little world with a proprietary Flyme account instead of Google services. What, in General, is not surprising.
The system works very quickly, but also eats up a lot of memory at startup (1070 MB). One characteristic of Chinese gadgets can record conversations and corporate antivirus/cleaning Manager/power supply/black lists for calls and SMS.
Camera
The quality of the cameras Meizu M1 Metal can be called the standard representative of the middle class: luxury clarity of shots or the speed at which “clap pictures” for a fraction of a second smartphone to give not, but by the standards of the models cost up to 20 thousand rubles he was pretty good.
Example photos taken with the rear camera of the Meizu M1 Metal
The recipe for good pictures on the great crisis is simple: more light — better picture. Yes, of sensor capabilities is not enough for good detail on the edges, if you set the focus on the center. With white balance automation is not mistaken almost never, but occasionally misses the mark with exposition: if the screen shows that the picture threatens to get nedouchtenny/peretochennym — you can overcome this illness by focusing on another object in the frame or “krutilki” in manual mode.
Example photos taken with the front camera Meizu M1 Metal
Example photos taken with the front camera Meizu M1 Metal
Quality photo Metal M1 capable of competing with Huawei P8 Lite, 5X the Honor, and the ASUS ZenFone 2, with “major” version ZE551ML. In comparison with the related M2 Meizu Note is much better removes front facing camera and does not drop the frame rate in night scenes — the Chinese definitely grow into optimizing the firmware.
Autonomy
Mediatek MT6795 is not the most economical processor in its class. OCTA-core Snapdragon 615/616 high rollers on this part look better. Therefore, even despite the battery capacity, Meizu M1 Metal is not hurt showed outstanding results.
Meizu M1 Metal
Use (brightness 200 CD/m2)
The duration of the work
Video from a memory card
7 hours and 15 minutes
Game
3 hours 30 minutes
Reading
7 hours 45 minutes
In a balanced (Internet-music-games) mode using battery power with varying degrees of success last until the end of the day, and for everything else you need to use power-saving modes — built-in tools allow their FlymeOS good to oneself.
The duration of the mixed workload tests (PCMark, 200 CD/m2, min)
Competitors
Meizu M1 Metal
Xiaomi Redmi Note 3
Huawei Honor 5X
Operating system
Android 5.1 Lollipop
Android 5.0 Lollipop
Android 5.0 Lollipop
Screen
5.5 inch, 1920×1080, IPS, 403 ppi
5.5 inch, 1920×1080, IPS, 403 ppi
5.5 inch, 1920×1080, IPS, 403 ppi
Processor
Helio X10 Mediatek MT6795 2 GHz (8 cores, Cortex-A53)
Helio X10 Mediatek MT6795 2 GHz (8 cores, Cortex-A53)
Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 MSM8939 1.5 GHz (8 cores, Cortex-A53)
Graphics
PowerVR G6200
PowerVR G6200
Adreno 405
Operational memory
2 GB
2 GB
2 GB
Permanent memory
16 GB, slot Micro SD
16 GB
16 GB, slot Micro SD
Link
4G (LTE Cat.4), 3G, Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11 b/g/n), Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, GLONASS
4G (LTE Cat.4), 3G, Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11 b/g/n), Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, GLONASS
4G (LTE Cat.4), 3G, Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11 b/g/n/ac), Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, GLONASS
Camera
main: 13 megapixels, with autofocus, video recording 1920×1080
front: 5 megapixels
primary: 13 MP, autofocus, video 1920×1080, front: 5 MP
13 MP main with autofocus, video 1920×1080, the front — 5 MP
Battery
3140 mAh, non-removable
4000 mAh, non-removable
3000 mAh, non-removable
Sizes
150,7×75,3×8,2 mm
150x76x8,7 mm
151,3×76,3×8,2
Weight
162 g
164 g
158 g
The price at the time of publication
13 000 rubles
14 000 rubles
17 000 rubles
Buy
Call vertelki:Xiaomi Redmi Note2inline
Call vertelki:Huawei Honor 5X2inline
Conclusions
To compare cityfone each other — a thankless task. There will always be comrade with the usual remark, “how dare you praise this model, when xiaocai/iNew/Jeasung/yet-some-noneym offer such features even cheaper?”. And yet, praise Meizu Metal there for that.
Good display and good sound in headphones, decent camera quality and a decent supply power for 13-14 thousand rubles, which ask for our hero Chinese online stores. Of course, metal in Metal not as much as predicted by the ads, but even small touches (polished edging on all four faces) it is sufficient that the smartphone does not look cheap, is made of vtorsyrja.
They say that during Soviet times, the guests from China were remarkably adapted to our socialist reality and, with his usual wit them Asian, native lived not worse than Soviet citizens. Sorry about the Chinese cell phones in modern Russia it is impossible to say the same: in the regions Meizu Metal buyers will encounter a non-working 4G and globally lovers “exclusive from China” have to do separate (partial) Russification of the phone and put up with crooked screwed by Google.
What is the situation there the main competitor, Xiaomi, we will try to check later, but in the Russian retail less powerful, all-metal Huawei-which-how-to-not-Huawei is worth at least 4 thousand more, and with Heath flew into space price tags of competitors. But according to the geeks at scale “performance/price” M1 Metal good now, so the question of buying ancient Chinese models in the difficult times of crisis we’ll leave open.
Meizu M1 Metal
Advantages:
Disadvantages:
- quality display
- high (by the standards of the class) performance
- practical design (microSD slot, painted metal parts)
- a good camera
- the battery quickly sits down
- rapid wear of the housing due to the thin layer of paint
- not support all LTE frequencies used in Russia
- bad Russification
- poor support services Google
Those readers who are not scared of the disadvantages of Meizu M1 Metal, the store offers a Gearbest promo codes: Metal16GBG (grey model) and Metal16GBW (white model).