Meizu m1 note review: A major scale

Default MX browser

The web browser plays a central role in the Meizu m1 note as evidenced by its shortcut's position - the middle shortcut in the dock at the bottom of the homescreen, which is usually where the app drawer shortcut goes (or the dialer shortcut).

The browser interface dedicates almost the entire screen to the web page, save for the status bar on top and a tiny bar on the bottom for Refresh, Tabs and Bookmarks. Choosing Tabs opens a quick pop up preview of your open tabs instead of bringing up an entirely new screen, which is great as it still leaves the website your on in plain view.

The browser supports double tap and pinch zooming. It's really fast and fluid too. There are also goodies like text reflow or sharing an URL over email or SMS.

Browser

There's even a Reading mode that looks exactly like the one on the Apple iPhone. Normally we're against copying but the feature is a no-brainer that we'd like to see added to every major browser out there.

Other apps

The Meizu m1 note features a calendar that supports multiple online accounts. It offers monthly, weekly, daily and agenda views and is pretty straightforward to work with. Creating a new event lets you set which calendar to store it in, along with a reminder.

The Calendar has a very minimal, clean look but retains all the functionality you'd expect. You can also go for the Google Calendar - it's available for download as a separate app from the Play Store.

Calendar

Moving on, we have the Clock app that will handle multiple alarms with custom repeat times, ringtones, snooze time and labels. There are also a stopwatch and timer integrated within the Clock app.

Clock

A calculator app is also on board. Interestingly you can use it as an overlay to the homescreen. You can't manually resize it but you can choose between two size settings. It offers a currency converter too.

Calculator

The Memo app is clean and simple. You can add notes, images and even check lists into it. The Painter app will let you paint with a number of virtual tools, choosing different colors.

Memo • Painter

The App Center works with only Chinese content but you can still use it, if you can read Chinese, that is. Thankfully, the Google Play store came preinstalled on our device so we got our apps from there.

App center

The preinstalled file manager lets you browse through the memory of the Meizu m1 note or through Recents, or through different media types - music, videos, pictures, etc. It allows copy, cut and paste and also sharing of files on your device.

File manager

Perhaps the highlight of Meizu's homebrewed apps is the Security app. It lets you scan for viruses, clean junk files, keep an eye on your large files, manage your data traffic, and most importantly - control the permissions for each app you install.

Security app

Finally, the latest version of Google Maps comes pre-installed, so you can use it for navigation, offline maps, places suggestions, among the other cool features it offers.

Google Maps