Both of Meizu’s latest handsets, Meizu MX4 and MX4 Pro, feature Meizu’s very own take on Android, Flyme 4.0 OS. This skin, or OS, whatever you want to call it, is a heavily customized version of Android and it takes some getting used to if you use it for the first time. Flyme OS doesn’t feature a separate app drawer, interestingly enough, so all your apps will be right there on the homescreen. The OS also offers a few different gestures in order to make your usage of the handset more enjoyable etc. The fact is, however, that Flyme 4.0 is a rather solid take on Android and it really is an enjoyable skin to use, as long as you don’t mind the fact that it is different. The skin’s design is rather flat and pleasing to the eye I’d say, so that shouldn’t be a problem. Well, Flyme 4.0 is great, so the 5.0 version should be even better, right? Well, according to the latest report that came our way from China, it definitely will be.
You might recall that Meizu and Alibaba have signed a contract in order to include part of Alibaba’s YunOS into Flyme and thus give users a better experience overall. Well, you can expect significant changes in the next version of Flyme. According to Meizu’s Chief Product Officer, Yan Yang, The company wants make the updates even more frequent in order to offer users the best possible experience and squash any bugs that might roam around the OS. That’s not all, of course, Meizu’s Chief Product Officer also added that the company wants to adapt the design and functionality to what users want, in other words she wanted to point out that Meizu takes your wishes and advice and designs the OS in order to suit your needs. Flyme 3.0 was a somewhat messy OS and it didn’t offer the same looks nor the functionality of the Flyme 4.0, but there is of course much more room for improvements and hopefully Meizu will be able to make them in the next iteration of Flyme. Considering that the Flyme 5.0 OS will be based on Android Lollipop, we can expect more animations and of course more fluid experience overall.
Another thing that Yin Yang mentioned regards Meizu’s built-in applications. The company will focus on providing what they think are useful apps within the OS, according to company’s CPO. Apps like mPay which were introduced recently will most definitely be developed further, whether we want it to or not and we can expect more such apps it seems. I don’t mind pre-installed apps as long as I can disable / remove them and they don’t affect the performance of the OS. Anyhow, it remains to be seen what will Meizu introduce. The company also wants to adapt their newer versions of the OS to the older models company has produced, like Meizu MX2 and MX3, does this mean we’ll see Flyme 5 roll out to both of those devices? Well, quite probably. Meizu also wants to tackle the one-handed usage, in other words increase usability of the OS. They have already tackled this issue to some extent, but we can expect further improvements in that area, at least on phones with larger screens.
Optimization, optimization, optimization. That’s basically the word Meizu’s CPO mentioned the most and that’s not a bad thing, quite the contrary. We want every manufacturer to optimize their OS offering as much as possible, looking at you Samsung. She cleverly dodged every question regarding Meizu’s upcoming handsets, the details at least, she left the door widely opened basically. That’s basically it, I like the way this is all going, Meizu is really becoming an important player in China, it remains to be seen if this company can significantly compete with Xiaomi and can they expand outside of Asia, only time will tell.