Graham Morrison gets his hands on Canonical's third Ubuntu phone.
Building a mobile operating system to carve a chunk out of Android and iOS dominance is going to take courage and time. But one of the ways we've theorised that Canonical's Ubuntu Phone platform could become successful is if Canonical is able to find some partnership with a Chinese manufacturer and somehow tap into the ginormous Chinese market. This new phone isn't that. But it could be the beginning of the beginning of that. Meizu is one of China's biggest smartphone manufacturers, and the Ubuntu Edition of its MX4 handset is the first time the company has ventured outside its geographical comfort zone (the Ubuntu MX4 is only available in the EU) and its own Android-based ecosystem.
The original MX4 was released in September 2014, and while it was quickly superseded by the MX4 Pro, increasing its screen DPI and upping the RAM from 2GB to 3GB, we'd still consider this old MX4 an upper-middle class device. It's light (147g), powerful (Quad-core 2.2 GHz Cortex-A17 plus a quad-core 1.7 GHz Cortex-A7) and oversized - the screen is 1152 x 1920 pixels spread across 5.36 inches, giving it a DPI of around 418. The rear camera boasts a 5248 x 3936 resolution and dual-tone LED flash. It's a huge upgrade over the original Ubuntu Phone and is available for €299, only €130 more.
Despite being large when used in one hand, the MX4 feels fantastic. Gorilla Glass and a substantial aluminium surround gives the phone a high-quality rigidity, and while the back is plastic, it's nicely textured and non-slip. The screen in particular is perfectly suited to Ubuntu's operating system, as there's barely any bevel at the edges. This makes it easier and more intuitive when perfuming Ubuntu's essential sliding gestures from the edge.
Software purity
Meizu is very controlling with its own software, and it's impressive that Canonical has been able to negotiate terms for installing Ubuntu unhindered on its devices. In one way this is good. If you'd bought this device with Android, for example, you'd still be limited to the base 4.4 version (although there are alpha versions of 5 available), and a version of Android hidden behind Meizu's Flyme OS skin.
But the lack of any input from Meizu is also a bad thing. There's nothing we can find in the operating system that's specific for this device, other than the now-lost capacitive button support. You can't reduce the size of the icons or fonts because the screen is now bigger, and the recovery partition is non-existent. This means you're going to be stuck if an upgrade breaks your phone. You should theoretically be able to install a new version using Android's fastboot, which remains functional, but we couldn't get this to work at the time of writing. To be fair, this problem seemed to be the lack of builds rather than the device itself, so it's likely this will work in future. But these are reminders that using these devices remains the domain of enthusiasts rather than a mainstream audience.
Performance appraisal
In hardware, the MX4 is an excellent upgrade over the BQ E4.5. The all-but-essential side-swipes to switch between scopes are 95% smooth, compared to 80% smooth on the BQ (we've just invented this metric). Apps are quicker to load, input is faster and the screen size feels a more natural home when interacting with the on-screen keyboard or the gestures input. There's a huge battery in the MX4 (3100mAh, non-removeable, but it looks easily hackable with the back off) and we had the phone with us through two days of moderate use before having to charge.
A couple of neat features in the Meizu's Flyme OS version are the ability to turn the phone off overnight and to turn the phone on and off with touch gestures. It would be great to see some of Meizu's ideas make it into their incarnation of the Ubuntu Phone, but we can understand why Canonical wants to keep the phone restricted to a single, standard operating system.
Camera performance is a big upgrade over the BQ E4.5 too, but it's not as great as the pixel count would suggest. Ubuntu isn't to blame here, as we were able to compare photos taken with the same hardware on Android. Brightly lit images are colourful and detailed, whereas even with the flash, low-light images can lack clarity. This is unlike the Nexus 5, for example, where its much more modest sensor is capable of generating fantastic looking photos. We also miss the dual-sim capabilities of the BQ E4.5 - excellent when travelling - but even more importantly, there's no SD card expansion on the MX4. That means you're stuck with the storage soldered into the device, and for consumer units, that's a measly 16GB. We've been sent a 32GB version, which also differs in the colour of the back panel, but depending on how you use storage, this could become a deal breaker.
In an ideal world, at least while Ubuntu phones become established, we'd like to be able to dual-boot with Android. We understand why this is unlikely to happen officially, but we do wish Canonical would attempt to persuade Meizu to open up its platform. There isn't the same commitment to open source that we can see with BQ, for example, and if you head into uncharted territory to try to partition and flash your phone, there's isn't any information that hasn't been reverse engineered from an Android ROM. Unlike many MX4 devices, our bootloader/fastboot was unlocked, which meant we could theoretically dual-boot or install Android - and we did get Meizu's recovery.img booting live from fastboot,which would allow you to install Flyme OS if Ubuntu got the better of you. But each step could brick your phone, and without access to an official recovery partition or scatter files (similar to a partition table description), we can't recommend this strategy for anyone other than confident Android hackers. However, if you are an enthusiast and you're looking for a new kind of Linux phone, the MX4 is such a huge step up over the original BQ that we'd have no hesitation in recommending it. Just keep your old phone handy.
VERDICT
Fabulous hardware for a decent price. Just don't expect Ubuntu's OS to compete with Android just yet.