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?
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.
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.