Meizu MX4 coming to Malaysia… unofficially

For almost 2 years now, phone makers in China have been spearheading into the Malaysian market mercilessly. They brought in phones that were not only very affordable, but packed with high specs and features, without having to break your bank wide open. The rising company Meizu, one of many Chinese phone makers like Oppo, Xiaomi, Huawei and OnePlus, has recently released their Meizu MX4, and it’s something to be really impressed about.

Being leaked for quite some time already, the device was finally unveiled in Beijing, and now it’s making its way to Malaysia. Unofficially of course, thanks to our local grey importers.

The MX4 is a very impressive piece of kit. The devices dimensions are 75.2 x 144 x 8.9mm, and design wise it looks awfully like an Android version of the iPhone 6. It’s 5.36-inch screen is full HD, on a resolution of 1920×1152 that pushes a pixel density of 418ppi. Although this looks good on paper, it has a very unusual screen size with an aspect ratio of 5:3.

It runs on Mediatek’s MT6595 octa-core processor, featuring 4 ARM Cortex-A17 processors and 4 Cortex-A7 processors, claiming to outperform it’s predecessor the MX3 by 87%. For gaming, there’s a PowerVR Series 6 GPU which claims to be an 88% upgrade over it’s predecessor. 2GB of RAM will handle the multitasking, along with a variety of storage options for you to choose from such as 16GB, 32GB or 64GB. Keeping the lights on is a 3,100 mAh non-removable battery that’s sourced from Sony.

If that hasn’t impress you yet, the camera just might. It packs a 20.7-megapixel IMX220, 1/2.3″ CMOS sensor from Sony with a dual tone LED flash. There’s also a 2-megapixel Sony IMX208 front camera. For video, it has 4K UHD video recording capabilities at 30fps.

As for software, the Meizu MX4 will have Android KitKat 4.4.4 out of the box, with their own Flyme 4.0 OS pre-installed. Meizu has claimed that ART (Android Run Time) will be running default as soon as your device boots up, instead of the traditional Dalvik runtime. Flyme’s new and improved UI will feature a flat design, with several redesigned application icons, third party notification icons and popular site icons.

Security measures have also been improved, along with added voice assistance, reading center, and even a whopping 40TB of cloud storage. This will be Meizu’s first ever 4G smartphone, that will not only provide 4G to China’s own telcos, but also to international markets including Malaysia thanks to it’s support for 4G FDD-LTE radio band, in which is currently missing in Xiaomi’s new flagship the Mi4, that only has TDD-LTE support. It’s standard connectivity includes the latest 802.11ac with dual band 2.4GHz / 5GHz WiFi. GPS, GLONASS, Compass and other global positioning systems will be supported as well.

The MX4 will come in 3 colours, namely grey, white and gold, in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB storage options. 16GB is priced at 1,799 Yuan (RM954), 32GB at 1,999 Yuan (about RM1,060), and the highest 64GB will be 2,399 Yuan (about RM1,272). The prices are decent for the specs and design, and retailer IPMart has started its Meizu MX4 pre-orders at RM1,299 for the 16GB model and RM1,399 for the 32GB version.

For those who need a change of scenery from Xiaomi, Oppo or even OnePlus, this could be your answer.