Smartphone design has reached its plateau. These days every handset looks like every other handset and the Meizu 6 Pro is no different.
It bears a very iPhone-esque design with a home button that’s reminiscent of Samsung’s (soon to be removed) home button.
The back of the phone continues the “this looks vaguely familiar” design, with antenna lines across the back which are reminiscent of some of Cupertino’s more recent smartphones.
When you switch the phone on, you’re greeted by the familiar Android set up menu, which means that if you’ve ever had to set up an Android phone before, you’ll know how to do this.
Once you’ve competed setting the phone up, you’ll notice a few things:
- Google services are not pre-installed on the phone, which is unusual, to say the least, for an Android device.
- As with many Chinese handsets, there’s no app drawer.
- There’s no back button. If you’re an iPhone user, this might not bother you but most Android users are used to having a back button below the display.
- The lock screen looks very similar to Apple’s lock screen, in fact it even has the “Swipe up to unlock” message.
The Meizu 6 Pro has 10 cores. That’s more than most flagship smartphones have today, in fact Samsung’s Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge devices only have 8 cores.
With that additional processing power, the Meizu 6 Pro should fly through apps and webpages, which it does initially. The real test however, is whether it continues to blaze through these things after using the phone for a few months.
The real star of the Meizu 6 Pro is the camera, which produces some of the most detailed images – even in lowlight conditions – that I’ve ever seen on a phone, with only the Huawei P10 reaching the same level of detail on any handset I’ve reviewed so far.
Overall, the Meizu 6 Pro is a good phone but with a few annoying caveats.
This is not a phone that you can use within a few minutes of taking it out of the box, you’ll need to spend some time to set it up and install Google services.
It is however, a beautiful looking device with sleek lines and a slim profile but the initial ease of use of the handset can be intimidating.
If you like to tinker around with your phone and gadgets, then this could very well be the phone for you but in an age where technology should be making life simpler, the Meizu 6 Pro adds a few unnecessary complications.
Score: 6/10
Pros: Sleek design, great camera, good display, dual-SIM (depending on region)
Cons: No Google services pre-installed, no earphones included in the box
Cost: From R6899.00
Specifications
| Dimensions | 147.7mm x 70.8mm x 7.25mm |
| Weight | 160g |
| Battery | 2560mAh |
| Storage | 32 GB / 64GB |
| Display | 5.2-inch FHD (1920 x 1080) Super AMOLED |
| Processor | Helio X25 processor
ARM Cortex-A53 1.4GHz x4 + ARM Cortex-A53 2.0GHz x4 + ARM Cortex-A72 2.5GHz x2 ARM Mali-T880 image processor |
| Memory | 4 GB LPDDR3 memory |
| Camera | Front:
21.16 megapixel ƒ/2.2 aperture
Rear: 5 megapixel ƒ/2.0 aperture
|
| Sensor | Hall magnetic sensor, Gravity sensor,
IR proximity sensor, Gyroscope, Ambient light sensor, Touch sensor, Digital compass, Barometer |
| Multimedia | Video：MP4, 3GP, MOV, MKV, AVI ,FLV, MPEG
Audio：FLAC, APE, AAC, MKA, OGG, MIDI, M4A, AMR Image：JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP |
