[Android General] oka1:
Hi All,

As a moderator for the Samsung devices, I have pretty much owned every device Samsung has made ...... So, I decided to venture out into some of the less known Phones from China/Far-East.

This one I purchased is The Meizu M1 Note I decided on this phone because of the price point and specs ...... Hey Octo Core, 403 ppi 13mb camera 32 gig internal memory

All for 205 bucks ....... not bad I figured I ll roll the dice ... After all it really is just a back up phone and a toy to learn more about ...... Glad I did.....

1st I paid the extra 27 bucks for fast ship Through DHL ..... I got the phone off of AliExpress.com (this is a subsidiary of Alibaba website) China's Amazon equivalent. There are many other decent sites to buy from do your research before buying ......... some sites are not so good. One way of discerning a reputable site is to make sure it is PayPal confirmed..... do your research. Anyway, after ordering I got a confirmation pretty quick... 6 days later the device was in my hands........ Cool !

A MUST HAVE BOOKMARK ...... http://www.trackingmore.com/ This site has all the major shipping services in one place. Makes it easy to track say "ChinaPost" or DHL or whatever......... Much easier on you ...... this allows to track the front end of the shipping better and gives you a better understanding why things take a bit of time to get out of China ...usually China then to Hong Kong through customs and then to USA.

As for the device...

Getting around on the phone when you 1st turn it on is a bit confusing......... Uhhh Most of the Icons are in Chinese, but after looking at it is easy to figure out how to configure ...... It runs Android 4.4.4 with Meizu's Flyme Shell ...... No worries what you really just need to do is to register on flyme I connected to Wifi then (THIS IS IMPORTANT) register with a Name, Like "Oka's-phone" do not use the phone number to register it will not recognize the Out of China number ... said it would I could not get it to work that way. Upon further investigation I discovered, there are 3 types of Roms it is running All the same ending with a letter . Either "U", "C" , OR "A" A.... is the international generic Rom. But, no biggie really they all work the same. Once you register with Flyme, you just go in and "Open System Privileges" and Voila' you are rooted.

Once you have done that you go to their App store (called App Center in English :)) There you search for Google installer, install that 1st then each of the Google apps separately. Once you have the Play store installed you now can download everything you need/want.

Now, one of the Downsides of using a Chinese phone here, for some reason Not all my paid apps would recognize on this , so They would not load from my Google backup.... :( ..... My guess the reason for this is some licensing conflict with the Play store and Flyme .... but it is what it is. ~~ Update All but 3 of my apps did eventually update to the paid version-

Performance

The device is pretty much performs like a Samsung S5 ........ but there are differences for one ....... you can root the phone just by Opening System privileges .... easy But...... The Boot-loader is locked...... so I do not see any Custom Roms coming soon until that is solved...... if ever.

The phone Benches on Antutu 42-43,000 much like a S5 ...... The graphics work very nicely, but I am not a gamer so.... can't comment on that.

Phone reception is excellent....... the Phone rings soft for 2 seconds then goes loud out of the box ... like to change that , haven't figured out yet, will update later on this.

Music Quality is decent considering it is a single speaker, I am going to install a sound app to improve the quality and see if that helps.

The stock software for the camera is Pretty lack luster........ so I installed FV-5 and Pro-capture........ FV-5 seemed to really improve the performance of the camera. I do not think the front-facing camera will work on Skype I tried and could not make it go ..... my guess it is not configured for that. ~~~ See Post #5 Suspect008 found the fix it is in the video configuration Thank you for posting the fix !

Video works pretty good actually ....... On the still photos, they seem only to be sharp to about 15-20 feet then they soften noticeably ... could just be me but I think the software that is controlling it is not modern enough......

The WiFi seems not to be strong as my note 3 or note 4 I need to be closer to the router seemed a little weaker ...... 15% +/- not a big deal but noticeable to me

GPS Works great ! Google maps is flawless, The Battery life is better than the S5 ...... Medium Use 17 hours and @ 56 % so that is excellent.

Bluetooth I have had no issues connected to my car, a keyboard and speakers 1st so that is good.

I tried using it with the Dual sim It works fine I used a ATT, Verizon and Tmo so it does work on both CDMA and GSM.

Those are my Initial thoughts ......... This is WAY worth the 205 bucks it cost me ..... It performs well enough that it can be you daily use device no problem .......... Not as good as a Note 4 but 1/4 the cost ......

I will update more as I discover more and provide some Chinese Translations on the device icons .....

:good::good::good: Give it 3 thumbs up for the price to performance .... Hope that helps all of you looking at this device