<p style="text-align: justify;">Meizu is the latest Chinese entrant in the Indian smartphone market and it announced its official entry this week with the launch of its flagship smartphone the MX5. The company is definitely late to join the party as the market has become quite congested with a number of Chinese smartphones. However their new smartphone does seem to have some potential.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Like many smartphones coming from China, the MX5 takes a lot of inspiration from the iPhone when it comes to the design. The handset has a metal back and a full glass panel on the front. The speaker grill and screws at the bottom will clearly remind you of the iPhone’s design. Nonetheless the smartphone has an appealing design and a solid build. For the display, Meizu has used a 5.5-inch AMOLED display with a full HD resolution with slim bezels which doesn’t make the smartphone feel that large. The display is bright and offers punchy colours, but because it is an AMOLED it offers warm tones.</p><p style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" src="http://bw-image.s3.amazonaws.com/meizu-mx5-4.jpg" style="width: 800px; height: 518px;"></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Underneath the display is the home button which acts as the home button as well as the back button. A simple tap/touch on the home button acts as the back function, pressing it takes you to the homescreen, while a longer press locks the screen. The fingerprint scanner is also embedded into this button and it works and similar to the ones found on the iPhone, OnePlus 2 and the Galaxy S6. It isn’t very accurate as it did unlock with more than one finger even after having only one registered, but overall it was pretty consistent. On the inside there is a powerful Mediatek Helio X10 octa-core processor clocked at 2.2GHz with 3GB of RAM and 16GB of storage which is sadly not expandable. The MX5 also has an impressive 20MP camera with a dual tone flash and laser auto focus. There is also a front 5MP camera for selfies.</p><p style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" src="http://bw-image.s3.amazonaws.com/meizu-mx5-2.jpg" style="text-align: center;"></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Running on Android 5.0 Lollipop the Meizu has used its own user interface called FlyMe OS. It is quite simple with all the apps residing on the homescreens and with options to customize it with themes, although the theme store said it does not support non-Chinese themes. The handset runs smooth and didn’t heat up even after long gaming sessions. The battery pack is sufficient to provide a full day’s charge and the smartphone comes with quick-charge technology which helps in charging the battery to 60% in just 40 minutes.</p><p style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" src="http://bw-image.s3.amazonaws.com/meizu-mx5-3.jpg" style="width: 800px; height: 492px;"></p><p style="text-align: justify;">The camera on the MX5 is quite good as the laser auto-focus system makes focusing quick and accurate. Pictures turn out to be sharp and even the colours come out natural and a bit on the neutral side. The camera app also offers some modes including panorama, macro, panorama, beauty and a slow motion video mode. The camera can also shoot 4K videos which look great but even 1080p videos turn out be impressive. Overall the camera is respectable and is probably one of the best in its category.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The Meizu MX5 offers an impressive performance package, a good looking UI and a snappy camera and not to forget the fingerprint scanner. At a price of Rs. 19,999 it does sound value for money, however the handset doesn’t offer expandable storage and 16GB could turn out be less after a point of time. Another reason to reconsider is that the company doesn’t have any service center as of now, but has plans to open around 40 or so in the coming day. So it wouldn’t be very wise to buy the handset yet until you don’t mind getting repairs done from a third party service center. </p>
