Meizu is on a roll. After a few months of silence early 2016, the company has announced three new devices in three separate conferences in April. Today, the company released the third device this year, the Meizu M3 aimed at the budget customers. This will be the successor to the popular Meizu M2 handset that was announced last year.
The Meizu M3 comes with a familiar design, much similar to the previous generation model. However, the company stresses that this is a custom polycarbonate body and comes with CNC finishing to ensure that you get a better feel and comfortable grip on the device. Further, there will be 2.5D curved glass up front. The company has reduced the thickness of the device to just 8.3mm and it weighs only 132 grams. There will be five different color options, white, blue, gray along with gold and pink colors.
Coming to the specs, the Meizu M3 will come with the new MT6750 octa-core chipset clocked at 1.5GHz. This would be a big upgrade from the entry level MT6735 quad-core chip from last year and should definitely boost up the performance. The company claims that on AnTuTu, the phone manages to score above 39,000 points, which would be pretty impressive. But performance isn’t the only highlight of this entry level chip. The support for LTEE FDD / TDD Cat. 6 with 2 x 20 model with Carrier Aggregation will ensure most networks are available and at speeds around 300Mbps. Plus, you get Mali T860MP2 GPU on board. For an entry level device, this is quite impressive.
As for memory, you get two versions, 2GB and 3GB RAM with 16GB and 32GB ROM respectively. This is further expandable up to 128GB via MicroSD (hybrid slot). You get dual SIM dual standby support as well. Like the M2, the new device also comes with a 5-inch display with 720p resolution. You don’t get gorilla glass, but it does have the protection from the SCHOTT Xensation Cover Glass which is also pretty good.
At the back, the Meizu M3 comes with a 13MP f/2.2 aperture camera with PDAF (0.2 sec focus) and color temperature flash. Up front, you get a 5MP f/2.0 aperture shooter with FotoNation 2.0 Beauty software ideal for selfies. Connectivity features include 802.11 a/b /g/ n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS and GLONASS. Finally, you have a 2870mAh battery on board which should be good enough for a day. As for the software, the phone will run on the new Flyme 5.1 OS powered by YunOS.
The base model with 2GB RAM + 16GB storage retails for 599 Yuan ($93) while the high-end model with 3GB RAM + 32GB ROM will go on sale for 799 Yuan ($123). These are pretty aggressive pricing for an entry-level device with these specs.
So, what do you think about Meizu M3?
