[CFT - Review] Flyme 7 Review – What’s New in Flyme 7

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2018-05-08 18:48

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Edited by rohit42 at 2018-05-09 15:46

 
Flyme 7 was introduced on April 22 during MEIZU 15 launch event and beta version (A) was pushed the same day to registered users including me. I am using Flyme 7 in my M6 Note for 10 days now and today I will share my personal experience with Flyme 7. This is not an in-depth review because it will be so lengthy that way so I will introduce only major changes or features.

Flyme 7 is introduced after 17 months (actually 1 week short) and it brings 300+ new features & 1300+ new enhancements. It is not based on Android O but Android N. I am not sure if it will be updated to Android O base.
All stock apps in Flyme 7 got minor to major UI & functional changes. Apps which got major UI & functional changes are Weather, Music, Camera, Settings and System Launcher. So, let me introduce you with these major changes and new Flyme 7 features-

System Launcher & System UI-

First thing you will notice in Flyme 7 is new Launcher and UI. New UI is clean and compact. Transitions and animations are much smoother. It is more colourful. Icons on status bar are compact now compared to Flyme 6. Now there is more space for more notification icons. Ram usage / availability info is more clear now when you open task manager. When you press volume + or - botton, volume control bar is on very top and is compact.

There is new feature in System Launcher – “Apps Indexing”. You can swipe up/down on Left/Right edge of any home screen to search Apps in alphabetical order. Slide left/right and lift your thumb/finger above the app icon when you find app with indexed letter.

Also you can now move an app to another home screen without dragging it to that screen. When you long press an app icon, you will see the screen layout (Screen 1, Screen 2, Screen 3…) in the bottom, drag the icon to the screen layout in which you want to move your app.
       
Bubble Notification-

This is my one of favourite feature in Flyme 7. When my friends saw bubble notifications, they said “Is it an iPhone?”

I really love these bubble notifications. Notification now looks clear and you can reply to notifications in bubble from the notification panel or floating notification bubble itself. The bubble has white background and black text for notifications. It will give you premium experience.
   
Face Unlock-

I was shocked to see this feature first but later I found that this is not available for all MEIZU phones (at least for now). Luckily itis available for my M6 Note and I can share my experience with it. It is not secure as iPhone X as it is software based not hardware but is enough secure.The Flyme 7 Face Recognition has several advantages to ensure its security, it includes TEE framework to protect your private info, liveness detection toa void photo unlock or sleeping unlock. It uses front camera and algorithm to collect your facial recognition points. We can’t unlock apps though using face unlock as of now. In low light, it takes approx. 2 seconds to unlock but in good lightingc onditions, it takes less than 1 second. It is very easy to add face ID andtakes just 5 seconds. I don’t know yet if it will be available for all phones or not. There is a dedicated video demonstrating Face Unlock in the bottom, you can check it for better understanding.
 
Night Mode-

In my Interview thread last month, Rudra mentioned about this feature that he wants this feature in Flyme 7 and it is actually present in Flyme 7. I have used Night Mode in few apps like Telegram earlier but Night Mode in all apps (System + 3rd Party) is so amazing. Yes, you read it right. Night mode is available in all 3rd part apps. It really helps at night to protect your eyes. You can enable it from Notification Panel.
         

Music App-

UI of music app is changed a lot and it has amazing new features too. UI is now clean and you will see “Favourites”, “Recent” and “Playlist” on top and all music below it in very minimal way. Also there is new animated music lock screen. There is no “Tap for options” in which you used to tap on music player screen to access options like volume, add to, timer etc. Now it’s “tap to lyrics”. The music player is so smooth now and you can close it easily like other apps (before the app used to still run in background even after you close it from task manager).

But the best feature is “Square Sound”. It is co-developed by MEIZU and national top acoustic team to offer an excellent hearing experience. It has 5 sound effects (Original, 3D Sound Effects, Power Bass, Pure Voice, Live Music) currently and more will be added soon. There was asimilar feature HD Dirac Sound in Flyme 4 which was removed in Flyme 5 & 6. Finally, we have such feature in Flyme 7. Square Sound only works with earphones/headphones plugged in and believe me, it rocks. You can choose any effects according to your taste and if your phone has built-in DAC, you will get best music experience on earth.
       
Screen Recorder-

Now you can change the Screen Recorder video quality to 480P, 720P or 1080P. Earlier screen recorded videos used to have very large size and users could not share the video on social media easily. Now with this feature we can record low quality screen videos for easy sharing. But this isn’t the only new feature in screen recorder. Finally, the screen record timer is hidden in actual recorded video. Yes, so when you record video, you will see timer, mic on/off icon and close icon but after the video is recorded and if you play it, you won’t see anything. This is an amazing feature. Now your recorded screen video will be clean.
 
Screenshot Share-

This feature is currently available in latest Flyme 6 Closed Beta too but I first saw this feature in Flyme 7 and it is very useful. In Flyme 6, when you capture screenshot, you get a notification in notification panel and you can share the screenshot from there by taping on share icon. But in Flyme 7, when you capture screenshot, you get a small floating window on bottom with Share icon. You can tap on share icon to share the screenshot or swipe down the window to hide it (it will also automatically hide after 4 seconds). This feature makes screenshot sharing so easy. (We can not capture screenshot of Screenshot share floating window, so i took this photo from my M5 Note. Sorry for the quality)
 

Camera-

Camera app UI is completely changed and is packed with lot of new features. There are 6 instead of 5 icons on top- Flash, HDR, Countdown, Effects, Beauty, Settings.
Change Camera, Capture and Gallery icons on bottom are same but there are 3/4 tabs instead of 3 above capture icon- Portrait (only for phones with dual camera), Photo (default tab), Video, More.
There is 2x zoom icon in Photo & Video tab and it works great.
If you swipe left to access “More” tab, there are following options – Pro, Panorama, Scan,Time-lapse, Slo-mo, Square & Backtrace.
There is no “Double-tap to Square” so this option is moved to “more” tab. You are familiar with rest of the options except Backtrace. It seems difficult to understand, however, just imagine when you have a group photo, everyone looks great except you, but with Backtrace, you can pick out your best one to fit into the photo.
   

Honestly, image quality of pictures taken with camera is increased a lot. You can check some of images below.
 
 
   

Conclusion-

I am using beta version on my M6 Note and I am shocked to see such performance. This is not stable version and stable version will be a lot better but I have not faced any major issues yet. Battery performance is amazing. RAM management is what lot of users were reporting in Flyme 6 and I must say I have always 1gb+ ram available out of 3gb in my phone compared to 400mb in Flyme 6. Apps do not close in background. Unfortunately, still I do not receive Telegram notifications in Flyme 7 beta. Hope it will not be the case in Global version. One Mind is smarter than ever. We can’t see it but it does a lot of work in background to provide smooth experience. Game Mode 2 has increased the gaming performance a lot. PUBG mobile runs smooth on my phone now. Flyme 7 is amazing and I am too excited about the Global Flyme 7.

Flyme 7 Quick Look Video - https://youtu.be/rpy7b4xBb5E

Below is Antutu Benchmark score of my M6 Note in Flyme 6 & 7. There is a small increase in score. Also, you can check interface of more apps in Flyme 7 in below screenshots -