Meizu MX5 flagship smartphone rolls out … in China at least

• Follow-up to the MX4 which was introduced barely a year ago
• Significant upgrades include the Super AMOLED display

SMARTPHONE maker Meizu has unveiled its new flagship, the MX5, at an event in its home market of China.
 
The smartphone will be available first in China, and going by the company’s past devices, will most likely be on sale overseas sometime after, although Meizu did not give any dates.
 
The new device is a follow-up to the MX4 which was introduced barely a year ago.
 
There are a number of significant upgrades that the company was keen to highlight. Among them is the display, which utilises Super AMOLED (similar to Samsung’s high-end devices) rather than the standard IPS (in-plane switching) technology on the majority of devices today.
 
Super AMOLED (active-matrix organic light-emitting diode) screens typically produce more saturated colours.

The 5.5-inch Full HD (1920 x 1080) resolution display also means that Meizu is reverting to a more standard 16:9 aspect ratio with the screen, compared with the wider 16:10 ratio found on its previous flagship.
 
Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3 is also present to provide some level of anti-scratch protection for the display.
 
Design-wise, the MX5 will come with a metal unibody exterior and available in grey, silver and gold.
 
The shape of the device doesn’t stray too far from the company’s current design aesthetic, with rounded edges on the sides, punctuated by a chamfered edge around the display.
 
The MX5 will be powered by MediaTek’s current high-end offering, the Helio X10 (also known as MT6795T), an octa-core chipset that sports ARM Cortex-A53 cores running at up to 2.2GHz and an integrated PowerVR G6200 graphics processing unit.
 
It will come with 3GB of memory, a prevailing standard for 2015 flagship Android phones.
 
In terms of imaging, the upcoming device will have a 20.7-megapixel rear camera, supported by a dual-LED flash and ‘laser-aided’ focusing system.
 
Meanwhile, the front ‘selfie’ camera is a 5-megapixel unit with an f/2.0 aperture to allow in more light.
 
The dual-SIM 4G capable smartphone will also have a fingerprint reader which Meizu claimed is an improvement on its previous generation’s sensor found on the MX4 Pro smartphone.
 
The MX5 runs on Google’s Android 5.0 Lollipop software, with Meizu’s Flyme OS 4.5 customisations.
 
It also comes with a 3150mAh battery, and the device supports fast charging.  Meizu said a flat battery can be charged up to 25% in just 10 minutes.
 
Like its predecessor, the MX5 doesn’t support external memory cards, so the choice of storage will be a key consideration for buyers.
 
The 16GB storage version will sell for about US$290, while the 32GB model will go for US$320. The high-end 64GB version will set you back US$390.
 
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