OS, UI and Everyday Use

The user interface is the biggest differentiation factor in the bushel of Android devices on the market. Meizu has its own FlyMe operating system that is in this case based on Android 5.1.

The FlyMe OS 4.5.4A that we tested is definitely inspired by the Apple iOS. It won't offer an app drawer by default and this is something that will take time to use. But in case you like the Android look and feel, you can simply install a different launcher. Both launchers worked flawlessly but we spent more time with the FlyMe just to be able to tell the genuine picture. The phone in our case came with an Android market and you can install all the apps as on any other phone but the phone has Meizu own AppCenter that is an alternative to an Google App store. The AppCenter offers a lot of applications meant primarily for the China market, as Meizu primarily targets mainland China and slowly expands elsewhere.

The company plans to release FlyMe OS 5.0 rather soon and this phone will get it. FlyMe gets regular updates over the air and you can expect to get at least a next few major updates on the phone. We cannot underline strong enough how much the user interface was inspired by iPhone iOS, but you kind of get use to the settings and features rather fast. It is at least a refreshing change in a bushel of identical or very similar user interfaces.

It all depends on what you prefer, plain Android and an app drawer, or something a bit flashier, with an iOS look, sans app drawer.

It will take time to get use to a phone that doesn’t have a dedicated feature or a back button as you will have to tap the home to go back. Once you get use to it, it works really nice. The settings menu definitely inspired by iOS is straight forward and it will be easy to find and change a desired feature.

Just as you can on many other phone Meizu M2 Note targets a young demographic and has a lot of themes you can download and change. Some of them are free some of them will cost some money and you can download a lot of wallpapers too.

Quick menu settings are iOS inspired will let you turn the Wi-Fi, data, Bluetooth, brightness or mute the phone. Once you expand the quick settings menu you get additional nine settings that will let you do things faster. The swipe from the bottom of the phone will open a task manager, just like in iOS, and it will let you kill the unwanted apps in matter of seconds.

FlyMe 4.5 looks really good and once you get used to it you will start to like it. FlyMe 5.0 is just around the corner and it will look even better. If this is not your cup of tea, you should install Google Now and enjoy good performance and snappy inexpensive full HD 5.5 inch phone with a standard Google experience.

The 3100 mAh battery will be enough for the whole day or work with decent usage. You can get day and a half probably even two days if you limit your screen time with the device. It charges rather fast so the battery life is quite good for a Full HD 1920x1080 eight core mobile phone with 2GB RAM.

The phone ships with a 5V 2A charger that was able to charge the battery in two hours and eight minutes. This is quite good result, but we've seen phones charging faster.

We have no GPS issues to report. Meizu M2 note will lock on satellites really fast and it will work as expected. It offers decent accuracy. The last thing that we wanted to share with you is that the storage is at acceptable speed. A score of 143MB/s in sequential read is rather great result and sequential write gets you to almost 45MB/s. This is a great score for this price range and this is one of the reasons why the phone was snapy with user interface, browsing and everydays tasks.