Housed in an all-metal unibody, the M5 Note features a 5.5-inch, 1,920 x 1,080 resolution display, with a 5-megapixel camera on the front and a 13MP sensor around back. Below the display is a home button that lives a triple life — not only does it also function as a fingerprint sensor, but as a back button by just tapping it. In lieu of a dedicated multitasking button, you can swipe up from either side of the home button to switch between apps.
At the M5 Note’s core are the 1.8GHz octa-core MediaTek Helio P10 chipset and either 3GB or 4GB RAM. You have a choice of 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB of native storage, though the Micro SD card slot allows for up to an additional 128GB. If you carry two phones with you, the Micro SD card slot doubles as a second SIM slot. The real star of the show is the phone’s gargantuan 4,000mAh battery, which can be charged from zero to full in 90 minutes.
As for software, the M5 Note runs Flyme 6.0, Meizu’s own flavor of Android based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow. The upgraded skin brings 400 new features, with the most notable being One Mind, an artificial intelligence system that changes the phone’s performance to allow faster access to your most frequently used apps.
The peculiar thing about the M5 Note is it arrives less than a year after the M3 Note’s introduction, making it much more of an incremental upgrade than anything else. Regardless, the M5 Note is available for around $130 for the base configuration (3GB RAM/16GB), and goes up to $217 for the 4GB/64GB version. Meizu did not mention international availability for the M5 Note, though it is available for purchase in China in gold, silver, grey, and blue.
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