Meizu M2 Note 4G 16 GB UK Version Dual SIM-Free Smartphone - Grey

Amazing value for money, using it long time now and still feels fresh.

I am very pleased with this phone and am glad I made the leap of faith in buying it. There is a bit of set up to do, but that is fun in itself.

I would have no hesitation in recommending the phone to anyone.

UPDATE: Please see the end of the review.
UPDATE 2 30/9/2015: See the end of the review.

Reason for purchase: 3 year old Nexus 4 touchscreen stopped working. I want another Nexus phone, but cannot wait until they release the new Nexus phones in Winter. I wanted something capable and cheap to tide me over, and if I'm really impressed maybe just keep it and not bother with a new Nexus.

First impressions are that the build quality is superb, up there with the big brand names. The 1080p screen is beautiful to look at and the phone seems mostly pretty quick. The Meizu "Flyme" theme is not my cup of tea.

I like and am used to the Vanilla Android found on Nexus phones, and wanted that experience or as close to it as I could get. The phone only comes with a couple of Google services like Maps and the Play Store, and the Flyme theme with its lack of App Drawer (who thought that was a good idea?!) was a pain. It's painless to install Gmail, Hangouts, Calendar, Photos, Youtube and any other of the Google Services you want. After installing the Google Now launcher to reinstate the App Drawer you can obviously remove the Meizu stuff from the homescreen and relegate them to the App Drawer too, but un-installation is a no go unless you root the phone which I haven't yet. I also installed the Google Keyboard and disabled the Meizu equivalent (TouchPal), disabled the Flyme icons and skipped past the option to create a Flyme account. I have already signed my life away to one company, one is enough :)

Along with a few other tweaks, doing this has created a pretty clean feeling Android installation. Meizu haven't "done a Samsung" and laden the phone with hundreds of useless apps, there are a few, but not enough to really annoy me. I have a few niggles still:

1. The thing that is puzzling me the most is that I cannot find a way to show 'cards' for every application that is currently open. Meizu have done away with the on screen buttons (triangle, circle, square) in favour of a singular button that has 3 functions. Touching the button takes you back, like Triangle, clicking the button takes you home like Circle, and long pressing the button just locks the screen. There is no equivalent to Square that I can find. You can swipe up from the bottom of the screen to show recent applications, but in the new version of Chrome I simply can't find a way to switch between different "tabs" or cards. This means you will have to re-enable tabs if you're using Chrome in order to quickly switch between different Chrome windows.

2. The camera is the weak point, it's not bad but definitely nothing to shout about. You have to hold the phone pretty still to get an unblurred image and it's easy to get washed out images in scenes with a large contrast of light and dark.

3. I have read that there is a bug that never allows the phone to go properly to sleep. Someone on XDA said their phone lost 30% battery overnight. I haven't charged my phone yet, it came with 97% battery and I've been playing with it pretty much constantly (installing apps, testing them, browsing the web, watching Youtube) for 5 hours which took it to 64%. We'll see what happens overnight.

4. The phone occasionally stutters, especially scrolling on very heavy websites. It still seems faster than my ageing Nexus 4, and honestly I didn't expect a great deal for a phone at this price with a MediaTek processor. For the most part it is very fluid and any stutter is just milliseconds, not anything to make the blood pressure rise.

5. There is still a tiny bit of Chinese language buried in the menus. The clock/alarm is one place where the OK button is replaced with Chinese characters. It doesn't bother me, but some people might not like it.

I can't speak for GSM/HSPA signal as my nano sim has yet to arrive, but will update later if there's anything to note. Overall pretty happy, my Nexus 4 feels ludicrously small now after only a few hours with the M2 Note.

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Update: The Meizu M2 Note (at least some units, mine included) suffers from wakelock issues where the CPU will not go into Deep Sleep when the phone screen is off. I lose between 20% and 30% battery overnight. A reboot usually fixes this for a while, but something always kicks in to prevent it from sleeping. This happens on a fresh out of the box phone with no additional apps installed. It's a massive shame because otherwise it's an excellent phone. Meizu might fix it in future, but I have read on XDA and Meizu forums that this problem is inherent in MediaTek processors so who knows. See the screenshot from CPU Spy that shows the problem. Notice 8 hours spent at 1040MHz, this was overnight. http://i.imgur.com/JzHaFvVh.jpg

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Update 2 30/9/2015: Well I've been using this phone for a few weeks now and feel like I know the phone pretty well by this point. I didn't mention GSM/HSPA+ reception previously as I had no sim card, but can confirm the signal is great. Voice calls are clear and reliable and don't suffer from drop outs or anything like that. The HSPA signal is strong too, there's never been a time where other people on my network and location have a signal but I don't, and more often than not I get full bars. The WIFI signal is very good too, I can get a solid signal at the end of my garden which my Nexus 4 struggled with a bit.

I have noticed that although the glass is supposedly Gorilla Glass 3, there are lots of tiny hairline scratches forming on the front. I always keep my phone in a pocket on its own (ie not with keys or anything) and my Nexus 4 took well over a year to attract any scratches, but this Meizu seems to be starting to scratch already. You can't see the marks unless you turn the screen off and angle it in the certain way, but I imagine this will only get worse as time goes on.

There are also microscopic blemishes appearing on the plastic frame around the screen where it seems like the paint might be wearing. Again, unless you're searching for them you wouldn't see them but it's an indication of what the phone might look like in a year or so.

I haven't gotten anywhere with the wakelock issue, but it is not a constant problem. A lot of the time the phone sleeps OK, and it's not as big an issue as I thought it would be. Someone in the comments mentioned a tool that forces the phone to sleep, but it only works on rooted phones. I might try this in future if it really starts to annoy.

The digital compass (or whatever it's called) in the phone has issues. Sometimes when I load Maps or Ingress, although my position is accurate, it shows that I am spinning around in either 180 or 360 degree circles. This doesn't affect usage as long as you don't want to use the phone as a compass. The GPS is fast to lock and has always been accurate.

The Processor in this phone is fast enough. Not every action is instant, sometimes the phone might hang for a second when switching between apps but it's not something that causes annoyance. I am impatient and slow computers make my blood boil, but it hasn't gotten to that stage.

Overall for a phone of this price it is money well spent. It doesn't compare to the near perfect Android implementation of a Nexus phone but for less than half the price of the new Nexus 5X it is understandable. I am still undecided whether to go for a 5X at £340 or whether to keep this.

I am very impressed with this phone. The screen is lovely and I like the minimalist feel of Flyme. I had purchased a Niklin flip case that has the added bonus of triggering the phone's waking/sleep modes. I would recommend this phone.

Update: the biggest issue is multitasking. You have 2 GB but you can run background tasks only to some degree. An app called Security centre (among its other tasks) kills apps when phone is in standby. Many complaints around Internet about that. You can flag any app to be not killed but it doesn't work reliably. It could be great feature if it worked as supposed, since battery lasts many days then. So the only workable solution to prevent my apps from being killed is to root the phone and remove Security centre app (using App Quarantine).

Also the phone is not as loud as other phones, I can't use it in noisy environment and even can't notice incoming calls.

Great value phone if under £130 (otherwise there are better deals around). I bought one as a replacement for stolen Samsung Note II and it serves its purpose. It does almost everything what I could do with Samsung, except it has no HDMI and typing is not so precise (I make much more typos when typing than I used to do with Samsung). Camera is decent, WiFi is sensitive. GPS sometimes takes minutes to find location and is not precise. If I use maps often GPS stops working and I have to restart it. It is easy to root. Swipe from bottom to show Task manager if you want to switch among apps. Flyme OS is quite fine, phone is responsive, runs long on one charge.

Important: be careful if buying secondhand, ensure you can log in using your Flyme account, otherwise you might not have only limited functionality but it can be also a security hole.

I am on Three network and Internet is very fast, but you won't be able to use LTE if you are on different UK network (e.g. Vodafone).