The Meizu MX5 may not have been the best phone of the year, but the device impressed with the lovely camera and fairly good performance.
Meizu today unveiled the YunOS-powered Blue Charm Metal smartphone, which essentially looks like a Meizu MX5 on a budget. What’s interesting are the price tags for the 16GB and 32GB versions of this phone at 1099 Yuan ($173) and 1,299 Yuan ($205).
Specifications are very similar to the Meizu MX5, as mentioned. The screen on top is the same 5.5-inch 1920 x 1080p on paper, but it seems like there’s no AMOLED like the MX5 but an LTPS panel with 2.5D curved glass on top.
Moving on, the Blue Charm Metal is powered by the same MediaTek MT6795 Helio X10 as the Meizu MX5, but with a 2.0GHz clock as opposed to the 2.2GHz of the MX5. With that, the Blue Charm Metal gets 2GB of RAM and either 16 or 32GB of ROM, expandable via microSD.
There’s no laser focus this time round, but PDAF instead (something you also see on the Redmi Note 2) for the 13 mega-pixel rear camera. On the front, the Blue Charm Metal will have a 5 mega-pixel sensor.
If you thought the phone spells decent value for money already, there’s more: the Blue Charm Metal will come with mTouch 2.1, aka what Meizu call a fingerprint sensor embedded in the home button. Also noteworthy is the fact that this $173 phone will have a 3140mAh battery of non-removable nature.
There’s no word on when the Blue Charm Metal will make its way outside China.
On paper, the Meizu Blue Charm Metal looks like a very tough competitor to the Xiaomi Redmi Note 2… which falls second to this phone in a couple of departments. Don’t you think?
damn, I don’t get the m touch, so is it a fingerprint scanner or what?
Yes it is
Actually it can be but it doesn’t have to be. The M2 Note also has mTouch but no fingerprint sensor. Mtouch is a physical home button with a touch sensitive surface. So if you tap it, you trigger “back”. If you press it you trigger “home”. On some phones like the MX5, the Pro 5 and the Blue Charm Metal it also includes a FP sensor. Just to make that clear.
They stated on their official side that it can store up to 5 finger prints. So guess it is a finger print sensor.
You misunderstood my comment.
I was skeptical about it at first, but having used it for a while I love it and can’t imagine anything else on a phone. It’s so much more convenient to just swipe the button to go back or click it to go home.
LTE bands?
Sounds better then redmi note 2, but what about the YunOS? Is it possible to install Google Play Store on it? will it receive a long support as flymeOS ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yun_OS
Yash Gargano will it lanch in India?
With a few touches it could be perfect budget phablet.
It needs real Android instead to a forked one at least for international markets.
LTPS is most power efficient display backplane type. Probably this one gonna have great battery life thanks to it. IGZO is second best in the term of power efficiency, but cheaper. M1 Note and M2 Note got this type displays and both had good battery life. Worst type is a-Si and it sucks 3000+ mAh batteries dry on most of the cheap phones. It might be the reason behind bad battery life of Redmi Note 2.
IGZO and Helio P10 could make it more affordable, closer to Redmi Note 2 even with metal body and fingerprint scanner. Or at the same price they could offer more RAM and storage with those.
Performance difference between P10 and 2GHz X10 gonna be negligible.
… and it should have furthermore an IR Port to compete with Xiaomis Redmi Note 2. 😉
Personally I don’t find either the Fingerprint or the IR blaster useful in my day-to-day usage, I rather prefer they concentrate their efforts on more sensors than the 3 basic ones usually china phones offer.
Camera images of the M2 Note seems also a little bit better than the Redmi Note 2 in my eyes. If this metal smartphone has kept the same camera, then it is looking good.
M2 Note is good, I have one, but I would hope for a slightly better camera in this to suit the cut price MX5 appeal.
I agree. With cheap Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide -display they could make it more affordable.
I spent some time testing out Yun OS and it’s actually not that bad. It’s a look into the future of Mobile OS, there is heavy cloud integration and everything is designed around simplicity. There are ways to run the normal Google Play Store as well.
what about language?
Is it going to be half Chinese half English?
just install google translate
The version I used was entirely in Chinese, not sure if there is an English version.
do you speak Chinese too?
dude, what else you can do?
I do some business in China so I know enough to get by and I can read some.
There must be English on it, not everyone it China speaks/reads Mandarin, or what ever dialect.
It would be a very very weird decision to skip English as language.
I am not 100% on this but as far as I know there is no official English version, there are community versions which are in English. Yun actually AliYun was a niche product developed specifically for the Chiense speaking market.
Anyone who has more experience with it feel free to correct any of the above. I had never even heard of it until a few months ago when I had some hands on with a subsidiary of Ali Group.
dude,I checked my cellphone,Flyme comes with english.
I heard someone that Google Play Store mysteriously disappeared on his phone after an update.
Its possible, I have heard of that before with security patches for certain OS.
lets see how good the cam is … oh and i think redmi note 2 doesnt have a finger print scanner … so meizu already won on that front !
BUT at $173 local china price MEANS , 200+ for resellers :/ !
at least 200, that’s where it starts without shipping.
yeah :/
Bye-bye Xiaomi!
hey they are saying it comes in two variants a yun OS and a pure android Flyme variant ? is it true yash andy
I’ll never buy another Meizu after a ton of software issues along with locked down firmware. I dont even think they should be recommended here until they allow custom roms to fix their junk.
Especially meizu failed on m1 note. Bad optimized Flyme Os made me crazy. After f*cking 4.5.6 update I have 300mb free ram. It is not snappy anymore. And also very bad battery performance. Anyway, f*ck it…
If it is launched before the redmi note 2 then it would have been a huge hit. Even now it will be. And another thing is if redmi note 2 was not launched with heliox10 processor and 899yuan price tag then this phone would have had a higher price tag. Coz its almost same like mx5. Xiaomi always sets the price tag low for their own phones and forces other competitors to keep down their price by some ways..!
Blue Charm has no MIUI, no deal. Xiaomi just haves better software.
MI4C 3gb RAM or Meizu Metal?
MI4C if you like 5″ display.
non removable battery? only 4G-2G ON ? whew.. redmi note 2 did better than that 🙂
meizu metal is not good compare to hong mi note 3! Now its price is $197 (from antelife )little bit expensive than red mi note 3