Nubia Z9 Mini Review

There have been many Chinese smartphone manufacturers entering the Indian market as seeing a potential market for their growth. ZTE has also entered the Indian smartphone  market with the Nubia Z9 Mini at the price of  ₹16999. Let's take what it has to offer for the budget hungry Indian market.
ZTE had already launched many low and mid range phones last year and is now ready to betting their premium line if products under the Nubia name.

Build and design

We had many Chinese phones that had premium build at very mid range process and Nubia mini is among them. The all alloy aluminium metal frame, glad and texture finish has truly like stunning in the black body. They metal frame has grey matte finish the with volume and power keys at the right side and dual SIM slot at the left. The keys also are metallic and have great feedback. On the top sites the 3.5mm headphone jack and at the bottom we have micro USB port with the speaker outlet. The back is removable and the panel has glossy look but it's actually plastic with diamond like texture and a silver text if Nubia logo at the center, under the back polycarbonate panel sits a sealed 2900maH battery with a sd card slot . The camera and LED flash is situated at the top left corner with a red lining for the camera lens. Same red theme is carried to the front with capacitive home and navigation keys with red backlight LED. The display sits around a very narrow bezel frame and a compact body.

Display

The front is almost covered by that beautiful 5" Full HD display with narrow bezels. The display is crisp and sharp with ppi of 441. The display isn't bezel less as its big brother the Z9,but is very narrow and helps in better handling. The color reproduction is great and pictures pop with bright colors and text appears sharp. Viewing angles are great and doesn't fade or color out.

Hardware and performance

Powering the phone from inside is a 64-bit snapdragon 615 processor clocked with 4 Cortex a-53 @ 1.5Ghz and 4 Cortex a-53 @1.0 GHz, which is mid ranger but  is a decent performer. The chip is coupled with a 2GB if RAM for better multi tasking and has adreno 405 to handle gpu tasks like games. All installed apps ran smoothly and the was no lag or stutter while browsing through different apps. The gaming was also nice with all graphics appearing clear and smooth.
There is 16GB of internal storage which can be expanded upto 128GB using the sd card slot.

Camera

The Nubia Z9 mini has a great camera and is equipped with a 16MP sensor from Sony which company calls it the NeoVision 5.0 SLR system with a 8MP sensor on the front. As company says the camera is a pro-SLR camera with great photography features.
The photos taken came spectacularly good for the phone at that range. The images captured are rich in details color and had no noise. The outdoor as well as indoor photos were just awesome and the low light performance is unrivalled one with its f/2.0 aperture. The camera in NubiaZ9 ini is a serious competitor and can easily beat even some high end flagships from top brands. The video quality is also very formidable and is great for any priced phone. The camera app is feature rich and with pro mode you can control each and every bit of your photography with some knowledge.
The front camera will please selfie lovers as its a wide angle camera and take some good shots.

Battery

To run these spec each phone we have a 2900 mAh battery on the back which is non-removable. The battery can easily last a day for a moderate to high usage. The call quality was good and it even comes with a FM radio in it which even one flagships of today are missing.

Final Thoughts

Nubia Z9 Mini will appeal to any smartphone buyer with its aircraft grade aluminium and that very capable camera. For its price of ₹16999 it's a killer deal. We are waiting for the Z9 to debut in India and we'll be getting you a hands-on video review of it.
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Image courtesy: GizmoChina

Meizu m1 note Review

Meizu m1 note

 Meizu have been releasing premium looking phones at affordable prices and now they have entered the crowded smartphone market in India,with the launch of Meizu m1 note. The handset is priced at 11,999 INR which is a great deal for such a good handset.
Today we look at the m1 note and see what it has to offer for its price.

Build and Design

Meizu has been late to metal build and most of their flagships are still posing plastic builds with little metal. In M1 note also Meizu has taken to polycarbonate plastic. The phone has lightweight alloy chassis and a unibody plastic body.

It falls in love with the previous generation MX3. The plastic covers the whole phone and there's no visible metal found. Back is curved for better grip and phone feels smaller in hand. The plastic is glossy and looks slippery, but it isn't slippery as it looks and has good grip to hold on.

From the looks we can certainly say that there's a influence of Apple's iPhone here, but Meizu have added some of their unique flavor too. 

The bezels at the front are slim for 5.5" phone , and the halo home button looks similar too iPhone 5's home button but this one is a capacitive home button and has nice look to it with unique gesture controls of meizu's flyme os. Physical buttons located in the same positions for each phone. The power button is on the top right, headphone jack top left and volume controls on the left side. Back she'll isn't removable and single sim slot is provided at the side and there's support for sd card. 

The bottom has grilled speakers with micros USB port on the middle. The rear is similar to a plastic MX4 with wraparound design, camera and a dual tone dual LED flash with Meizu logo at the bottom. 

There's unique optional colors including yellow, pink, blue and green will eventually be made available.

Display

At the front sits a 5.5" 1920 x 1280 full HD IGZO display from Sharp. The display is sharp with 403 ppi and colors pop out brightly. On concern that we found was that at time the display feels warm and there's a slight yellowish tint to it. 

The touch response is fast and accurate. The viewing angles are great, with consistent picture at even extreme angles. 

The display is great and you should enjoy playing games or watching videos without any problems. Meizu has been using amazing displays in their phones and this one is among the top ones out there.

Hardware and performance

Inside M1 note houses a MediaTek MT6572 with 2 GB of RAM. The chipset MT6572 is a 64-bit chip with octa core (8) Cortex a-53 cluster clocked @ 1.7Ghz. Mediatek has been fast progressing in the 64-bit market and this processor is a high performer which can take on snapdragon phones and with more RAM. The performance is top notch with smooth handling and easy multi tasking. Apps open quickly and handles all heavy apps simultaneously with ease. 

In benchmarks the chop performed well with Antutu score of around 41000 and quadrant score of just under 15000. Even with the minor quirks and issues of Flyme os the phone is a very high performer. On gaming and graphic side it has a Mali T760 which can handle high games like asphalt and real racing easily. 

Overall the phones octa core chip and 2GB RAM makes fruitful combination to deliver a high performance device at this low budget price.

Camera

On the back Meizu have implemented a 13MP camera sensor from Samsung rather than market popular Sony. It has an aperture of f/2.2 which seems but small compared to flagship devices. There a dual tone dual LED flash which helps in low light. For selfie geeks there's a 5MP front facing unit also.

The camera on the back takes air good images in the broad day light with nice details. The camera performance decrease as light goes down and the flash should help in low light. The camera app is very impressive with manual and auto modes to take great pictures as let your liking. In auto mode the pictures come great at day light conditions. If you have a good knowledge of photography then manual mode give you great control of your pictures. There's also Panorama and HDR modes. Fur video shooting the quality was just god and not that great.

Software - Flyme OS

The whole hardware is run by Meizu's custom made android the Flyme OS which is a completely different looking and beautifully designed OS. The Flyme os on this phone as it's flagships MX4 is based on Kitkat 4.4 and a scheduled Lollipop coming soon. 

On thing to note here is that Meizu uses the same version of Flyme on all of it phones so you are getting all the features that are supported as on a flagship Meizu phone.

The Flyme OS features lot of gesture and features that makes the handling easy. The overall performance and experience is smooth and feature rich. There are some minor issues here and there which should be easily solved with updates.

Battery and storage

There's a large 3140 mAh battery powering the device. The battery was average and not that great as you expect from such large battery. It might be due to software optimizations and should improve with your usage and future updates. 

There's 16GB of internal storage from which 12GB is user available and no expansion possible as no sd card is supported.

Final Thoughts

The Meizu m1 note lives up to its expectations - good build quality, excellent display, great camera, good UI and performance. It seems like an iPhone rip-off but has its own sets of goodies to offer, and the overall package with its looks and performance is quite impressive, especially at the price point.

It is bound to sway some users away from Xiaomi and OnePlus devices. We will soon find out how the Indian market responds to this new Chinese entrant.

Moto E 2nd Gen Review

Motorola has finally unveiled the upgraded Moto E variant for international markets. The new Moto E 2015 comes with several improvements, following the same upgrade mindset as Moto G. Its fixes what users have been asking for a while, leaving what works well untouched. The new Moto E brings a front camera, Android Lollipop out of the box and there is a LTE variant as well.

 Camera and Internal Storage

Camera hardware was the Achilles heel for Moto E 2014, but this time Motorola makes amend with a 5 MP Auto focus camera with wide f2.2 aperture lens which can record 720p HD videos. The sacrosanct front camera is also there. A VGA (640 x 480) Camera is present for selfies and video calling.
Internal storage is 8 GB , which is more in line with domestic competition in the same price range. There is option for 32 GB secondary MicroSD card storage as well.

 

Processor and Battery

The 4G LTE variant, which will be the pricier one, flaunts 64 bit Cortex A53 based Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 chipset, similar to Lenovo A6000. The 3G variant on the other hand offers 1.2 GHz
quad core Snapdragon 200 chipset with Cortex A7 cores. Both variants will use 1 GB LPDDR3 RAM .

Battery capacity has been bumped up from 1980 mAh to 2390 mAh , though Motorola hasn’t made any claims about how long this will last. Considering the fact that battery life was quite impressive in the last generation model, the bumped up battery should be good enough for decent experience.

Display and Other Features

The display resolution remains same at quarter HD, and the display size is marginally bigger at 4.5 Inches . You can indeed find sharper and bigger displays at this price point from phones like Huawei Honor Holly and Lenovo A6000, but if Motorola successfully maintains the same quality as original Moto E, lack of pixels should not be a deal breaker. Corning Gorilla Glass 3 is also present on top of the display. The handset will be running Android 5.0 Lollipop out of the box. The side borders can be peeled off and replaced with other accessory bands. Other features include 4G LTE / 3G, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n,
Bluetooth 4.0, GPS.

Same Price Bracket

The new Moto E will compete against phones like Lenovo A6000 , Huawei Honor Holly , Yu Yureka and Asus Zenfone 5 in India.Xiaomi will also introduce Redmi 2 in India later in the same price bracket.

Watch our Moto E 2nd Gen 3G variant Review: