Meizu MX3 review: Eastern connection

Connectivity lacks LTE

The Meizu MX3 will work worldwide thanks to its penta-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support. HSPA is only dual-band though and there's no LTE support on the device but given its limited global availability doesn't seem like such a waste.

Locally, you get dual-band Wi-Fi a/b/g/n. The Meizu MX uses Bluetooth 4.

Setting up hot spot

The microUSB port supports mass storage connections with a computer as you would expect and has USB on the go. The Meizu MX3 also supports Wireless Display.

There's also NFC support on the 32, 64 and 128 GB models (only 16 GB model lacks it) to complete the tally.

Home-brewed browser

The web browser plays a central role in the Meizu MX3 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 Meizu browser

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.

There's Adobe Flash support out of the box but, oddly, the browser didn't allow flash games to be played. Videos were okay, though. Naturally the Meizu MX3 also supports HTML5 videos.

Browser settings

There's no Google Chrome on board but you can load it up from the Google Play store.

Organizer and apps

The Meizu MX3 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

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 as a separate app from the Play Store.

Setting up event

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.

The calculator

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 app

The Notes app offers four different colors for the background of a note, which will be helpful if you want to organize them into several categories. There's a widget accompanying the Notes app, which displays the most recent notes and offers a quick shortcut for creating new ones.

Notes app

The Recorder app rounds off the organizer functionality of the phone. It offers the option to record calls, which some might find useful.

Recorder app

We've already discussed the Documents app, which is the built-in file manager. It handles all sorts of files, gives you copy, cut and paste and you can also mass select and drag items between folders.

Documents app

Painter is an interesting app, which lets you doodle with your finger.

Painter app

We'd recommend getting a stylus for the MX3 if you're into digital drawing as the app gives you a very powerful feature set. You can choose between different input options (pens and brushes), choose the opacity, thickness of the line, color, etc.

The app also let's you choose between four painting modes - Doodle, Watercolor, Blackboard and Sketch - each giving you different options.

Painter app

The main organizing apps are covered with the Meizu MX3 but if you find yourself needing something new the Google Play store is the place to turn to.