With every year, we tend to see quite a few launches happen in the first two quarters as the cycles in supply chains align for mass production to start around this time. We’ve already seen a number of new products from Huawei, LG, Samsung, and Xiaomi. Meizu is the latest company to join this list with its announcement of the m3 note.
With a 6061 aluminum unibody design, the m3 note draws heavily from the PRO 5. The rear camera is accentuated by a large, black surround with the pill-shaped dual-color LED flash sitting just below. Unlike the PRO 5, however, the camera sits flush with the back. Meizu’s unique T-slot design also carries over from the PRO 5. Instead of the usual plastic antenna strips, Meizu machines slots into the aluminum back, whose polished finish provides a nice contrast to the sandblasted aluminum.
The volume rocker switch sits above the power button inside a groove machined into the right edge, while the SIM and SD card combo slot is on the left edge. A 3.5mm headphone jack is found up top. The downward firing speaker sits next to a centered microUSB port on the bottom.
The m3 note’s 5.5-inch FHD IPS display—which reaches a peak brightness of 450 nits, according to Meizu—sits behind edge-to-edge glass. There’s also an mTouch 2.1 fingerprint sensor below the screen that’s surrounded by a stainless steel accent ring. Overall, the rounded corners, beveled edges, and 2.5D curved cover glass give the m3 note a similar in-hand feel to the iPhone 6s Plus.
| Meizu m3 note Specifications | |
| SoC | MediaTek Helio P10 (MT6755) 4 x 1.8GHz Cortex A53 (Performance) 4 x 1.0GHz Cortex A53 (Efficiency) Mali T860MP2 |
| RAM | 2/3GB LPDDR3-833 |
| NAND | 16/32GB (eMMC 5.1) + microSD |
| Display | 5.5″ 1920×1080 IPS LCD |
| Modem | 2G / 3G / 4G LTE Category 6 (Integrated MediaTek WorldMode) Dual SIM DSDS |
| Dimensions | 153.8mm x 75.6mm x 8.2mm; 163g |
| Camera | Rear Facing 13MP f/2.2 PDAF Dual LED Flash |
| Front Facing 5MP f/2.0 |
|
| Battery | 4100 mAh (15.79Wh) |
| Launch OS | Android 5.1 with Flyme 5.1 UI |
| Connectivity | 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0 GPS/GNSS, Micro USB 2.0, DLNA |
| Launch Price (CN) | 799/999 RMB (125/155 USD) 2GB/3GB |
Inside the aluminum chassis is an octa-core MediaTek Helio P10 SoC. This midrange SoC uses four ARM Cortex-A53 CPUs with a max frequency of 1.8GHz and another four with a max frequency of 1.0GHz in a big.LITTLE arrangement. These frequencies are a little below the P10’s rated frequencies of 2.0GHz and 1.1GHz, respectively. So either Meizu is underclocking the P10 to save power, or it’s using a lower-binned version of the P10.
The P10 SoC also includes an ARM Mali-T860MP2 GPU. This is ARM’s current midrange GPU, which features two ALUs per core instead of three ALUs per core like the high-end Mali-T880.
The m3 note comes in two different configurations: 2GB RAM / 16GB internal storage and 3GB RAM / 32GB internal storage. Both versions support microSD cards for storage expansion and feature a rather large 4100 mAh battery, which should provide the m3 note and its lower-clocked P10 SoC with excellent battery life.
The 13MP rear camera sits behind a 5-piece lens array with an f/2.2 aperture. It’s unclear who makes the sensor, but it does use PDAF to improve focus speed. There’s no OIS support, which is a feature that has yet to trickle down to this price point. The m3 note records video at up to 1080p30, a limit imposed by the P10 SoC.
The m3 note comes in three different colors: gold/white, silver/white, and gray/black. It will be available in China for 799 and 999 RMB for the 2GB and 3GB models respectively.
Source: anandtech.com
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