[Review] My first impressions & observations with my new MX

After winning this year’s contest to receive a Meizu MX (Thanks again to Meizu Me!), it’s now my turn to write a review about it.

In fact it rather is an experience report, as, obviously, I will not make any benchmarks etc. and will not talk about facts/figures/obvious things, which you can find in the several reviews that have been released already. Also, I choose not to talk about features, I really can’t say anything significant about (e.g. the camera: it works, and I’m happy with it). Though, if any specific questions arise, I sure will answer them.

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Maybe I should start at the beginning: My Meizu experience started prior to the release of the company’s first mobile phone. I read about the M8 on various tech sites and immediately became intrigued by its design, its state of the art specifications (at that time), combined with the very reasonable selling price if compared to similar tech. Inevitably, in the pursuit of more information I came across the Meizu Me fan site which proofed to be a viable source of info, news and an encouraged fan base. My enthusiasm soon caught my girlfriend as well, which led to both of us getting a M8 via mutual friends in China soon after the release. Checking back to Meizu Me was a necessity due to the frequent firmware and software releases. Yet, over time, skepticism grew (I believe for many users) as the M8’s firmware never really got past beta status which revealed itself in various glitches, errors, freezes etc. To make things worse, both of our touchscreens died shortly one after the other and had to be sent back to China for replacement. We refused to turn our backs on Meizu but, eventually, the M8 became outdated or rather a new/fresh mobile was desired (it is ridiculous how short all kind of tech lifetimes are nowadays). My girlfriend got herself a Meizu M9 as soon as they became available, whereas I have/had a wild rotation of several mobiles in usage (namely: Sony Ericsson’s K750i & W880i, LG KF750 Secret, Samsung Galaxy Spica i5700, Samsung Omnia 7, Apple iPod 4G combined with a c-peel module), essentially getting to know all operating systems out there, including their strengths and weaknesses.

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That was until I won the Meizu Me contest, with the MX virtually replacing all my other phones. Unfortunately, the phone was claimed by German customs, which delayed me receiving the phone. Effectively, I am using the MX for roughly one week now and in the following you can find my observations and impressions so far:

Hardware:
Building quality-wise, the MX leaves a very good impression, especially if compared to the M8 and M9. Personally, I like the white backside a lot, and the home button gives the MX a unique look.
I think some kind of rubber surface on the back side would have benefited the MX, as its width combined with the slick plastic material may lead to easier mishandling/losing grip of the phone, but this is object to each individual’s opinion I guess.
My absolute favorite piece concerning hardware/outward appearance are the action buttons/points. I’m not talking about the turning arrow etc. which is a mere gimmick, but the two single dots left and right of the home button which start blinking in idle mode as soon as there is a missed call, received short message, received whatsapp message etc. I think that’s brilliant and it reminds me a lot of one of my first phones ever, the Siemens M55, which also featured red colored signals when some kind of event took place. This way you can see whether you received a message or missed a call without touching the phone, and I’m glad Meizu implemented this.
The music quality via headset sounds really good to me, but it was impossible to prompt a reaction when using the headset remote of my Ultimate Ears 200vi. My educated guess is, that Meizu used a TRS stereo jack which cannot receive the added input from a TRRS jack plug (cf. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...udio_plugs.JPG). That means it would be impossible to change via software updates. I’m fine with the built-in loudspeakers as I would not listen to music over them anyways and being a left-hander might be a plus for me.
As far as connectivity is concerned, the MX does worse than any other device I had the chance to compare it with. If other devices get a full Wifi signal, the MX often gets 2-3 bars only, whereas if other devices only get 2-3 bars, the MX’s connection is a constant on and off again, pretty much the same signal strengths as with the M9. I would say the connection to my operator is pretty much the same as with other devices, or slightly less.
As a standard, the MX’s CPU level is set to “normal”, which means it is underclocked. I’m ok with this, though, as everything works very smoothly and I hope to get a longer battery life out of it. I’m not sure if this is true and I probably will play around a little bit with this setting. The battery life is not impressive anyway and needs a recharge every day.
Finally, I have to say the phone gets very hot if used extensively. My girlfriend told me that the M9 got even hotter on earlier firmwares and has improved since then. I still find it a bit troublesome but I trust Meizu will make the same progress with the MX.

Software:

First, I should state that I’m on software version 2.0.4-10949_zh-HK. I must say, I love what the Meizu developers have done with the look of the Android OS optically. There is still a lot to do in my opinion (I come to that later) but I will stick to their launcher as of now. The only thing I replaced was the keyboard. I chose Smart Keyboard Pro, as the space for the language button on the original Meizu keyboard appeared to me like some space lost and this way I was able to also add a German dictionary and German specific letters like “äöü”. I might take a look at rooting the MX in the future for the sole purpose to be able to install an AdBlocker app. I like Meizu’s continuity from the M8 all the way to the MX which can be seen for example in the music player (which, in my opinion, is the best available for Android, and I tried them all) or in the Documents viewer which is very easy and smoothly to handle all your files. The home screen resembles the one of iOS as Meizu got rid of the traditional “menu” and stores all installed software icons on the home screens. I don’t use that many programs anyway, and those I never or barely use are stored in folders.

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Yet, I think there is a lot of room for improvement left.
First of all, moving icons is a pain in the ass. Other icons will not move to the side if I drag another icon over or next to them. Also you can’t create folders by moving one icon above the other (cf. www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAqHe6LKW-A). Instead you first have to create an open space to move an icon there, and you have to create a folder first to move icons in it. Even if you have created this space, moving an icon there gets very tricky from time to time. While holding the icon the home screens switch from left to right and right to left even though the icon is held in the middle of the screen. This makes moving an icon to its designated spot quite a challenge. I know this is possible if another launcher is installed, but as stated above I would like to stick to the Meizu launcher and hope for some improvements in the future.
Furthermore, I can’t understand Meizu’s decision to abandon stop clock and timer from the (alarm) clock app, just like in the M8. I know there was no stop clock and timer for the M9, as well, but I’m not willing to install an alternative app just for this purpose when it really should have been included to the regular (alarm) clock. I can’t believe this requires such a big effort to include.
Finally, I think Meizu got too over-restrictive in some of its OS tweaks and this hurts the user. I am especially referring to the contacts and the calendar app. For example, if you want to create a new contact you can’t add a birthday to it. As a work-around I managed to type in all information over my google mail account and have it synchronized which works and can be displayed. When I try to edit this contact on my phone, though, all kind of weird stuff happens, like information gets deleted or the same information can be seen twice. That is not very convenient. Also, it is absolutely impossible to sort your contacts according to their family name. What’s the sense of abandoning that option when all other Android devices have this option?
As far as the calendar app is concerned, new entries over my gmail account will not be synchronized until I stop the calendar app and widget and delete all data from them. Then, the right data is collected from my gmail account. The other way around, entries from my MX will not be added to my gmail calendar. If anyone managed to get this working, I sure appreciate some input.

Basically, these were my first impressions I wanted to share with you. If asked whether I would recommend this mobile to other people, my answer surely would be differentiated, as so often it depends: I have seen few phones that can match the building quality of the MX, it appears very solid and I’m sure it will be very durable. On the other hand, it is almost a Meizu tradition not to have a final hassle-free firmware available, but you can always evade to another launcher app of course (which would also give you a real “menu”, animations when sliding from one home screen to another, and a smoother arranging of icons and folders). From my perspective, the making or breaking point is the selling price. Currently the Chinese version sells for 2999 yuan (approx. 362€) and the Hong Kong version sells for 3099 HKD (approx. 304€). Obviously, the “bargain margin” has shrunken considerably from the M8 days from a buyer’s perspective, and considering added profits from wholesalers in case you can’t get anybody in China who can buy and send it to you, I’m not sure I would have been ready to buy the MX myself, especially being a student.
The more I’m happy having won the Meizu Me contest and holding the MX in my hands which really turned out to be a very beautiful and powerful phone.

Thanks for reading and I appreciate all remarks and/or questions and am prepared to answer them.
Adrica87

Hey Adrica,
congrats again on winning the MX. Especially because you are german. By the way, add that to your meizume profile.
Thak you for your short review. I like how you pointed out some true special disadvantages from the phone like the syncronizing and contact problem. I really don't like such a habbit with my phone. When it comes to me I never synchronized my contacts with the internet because I don't like to upload my numbers and all. But that is the future and this has to work.
It seems like you say, that Meizu will never manage to deliver a well made FW in all classes.

I was really surprised to see the HK packing of the MX the first time. Now it is official that the CN version, which has a blue banderole, is different from the red one from the HK version. Can you make a detailed shot of the front and back of the banderole and post it here?

My question is, if you are into Meizu since the M8, why you only have 11 posts in more than two years of membership? And you wrote about reading here at meizume about the M8. So either you were not registered here as you bought the M9, or you bought it pretty late (after Sep 2009).
Would be great to hear some answers to that questions.
No offense by the way.

Thanks for the review Adrica, a bit of a wall of text but I've read most of it, maybe you could add some more titles

The connectivity thing could be a real issue, if it's hardware wise at least.

The other way around, entries from my MX will not be added to my gmail calendar. If anyone managed to get this working, I sure appreciate some input.

You have to go to Calendar > Settings > Default calendar accounts > Select the one with your Gmail Name. Works fine for me ever since I changed that setting.

Originally Posted by nice2know_u

You have to go to Calendar > Settings > Default calendar accounts > Select the one with your Gmail Name. Works fine for me ever since I changed that setting.

Thanks for the tip. Actually, I had set the default calendar account already, but forgot to the reenter the calendar entry. After deleting and reentering it, the synchronization worked. thanks!

I don't think the red banderole signals a HK version. It seems to have been a Chinese New Year special only:

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right, it's just for those phone selling during Chinese new year, you can see a dragon, it's the Chinese new year of dragon

I have both banderoles ;-)

Gesendet von meinem MEIZU MX

Originally Posted by Adrica87

Thanks for the tip. Actually, I had set the default calendar account already, but forgot to the reenter the calendar entry. After deleting and reentering it, the synchronization worked. thanks!

I don't think the red banderole signals a HK version. It seems to have been a Chinese New Year special only:

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Thanks for the detailed review.

About the red ribbon, the first batch of HK version also had blue ribbon but got replaced by red one before the Chinese New Year.

Both CN and HK versions have/ad a red ribbon, the difference is the text. HK version has English text only and CN version has Chinese and English text.

Despite all "issues" with MX, i actually like it more and more for every day i use it.

thanks for the pic, even I can not reard every word written on the baderole.
ah ok, now I know. I thought there would be more differences than just the language used. I thought there would be a different packing.
So Adrica, you got a MX-HK with New Year edition? Guess like MXon said they must have changed it before Chinese New Year, because you got your MX at around the end of the festivities (29th of January).

@ crimson
how come?

Can anyone post the normal CN and the normal HK kacing with it's banderole please? I like to see the difference.