Flyme 9 and Flyme for Watch review

Flyme 9 was presented at yesterday’s presentation. The latest version of the user interface developed by Meizu is a big upgrade over Flyme 8. They also showed the development of the interface designed for smart watches – Flyme for Watch.

Flyme 9
The home screen has been significantly redesigned to allow the placement of large widgets, such as Apple iOS 14 and vivo Origin OS, which allows you to directly receive information without need to open the application itself.

Many dynamic wallpapers have been added. A new grid system has been introduced and the icons have been updated. If the icon size of a third-party app does not match the shape and size of the Meizu launcher’s icons, an algorithm has been developed that automatically aligns it to create a sense of unification and symmetry. Thus, the new shape of the icons and widgets complement each other and together create an orderly, diverse and completely new desktop.

The interface of the setup screen has also been redesigned to be more intuitive and easy to understand. The lock screen settings are significantly increased, improving adaptability. New and even more beautiful and smooth animations.

AOD (Always On Display) has also been extensively redesigned, allowing the user to create their own style. Many animated images have also been added.

Improved and with new features is Quick Look 3.0 (Small Window Mode), which allows you to open applications in small windows over another already open application.

When watching PiP video (Picture-in-Picture, in a floating window), functionality has been added to mute the video, resize the floating window, or swipe to temporarily hide/minimize it to the side when just listening. PiP video itself is used in Android OS phones, but does not have the listed settings available in Flyme 9.

Aicy artificial intelligence has also been greatly improved. One of its most attractive innovations is in the field of smart home. In addition to Meizu Lipro products, it can interact with those of other companies, such as Mi Home, Google Home.

Many smartphones with the selfie camera located in a punch hole in the display do not have notification LEDs. So if you receive a notification in silent mode, you must have the Always On Display feature turned on or turn on the display to see the notification. However, Meizu has again found an attractive application of perforation. In the Meizu 18 series the perforation is used as an LED indicator for notifications. The innovative design, called Small Circle, is similar to the mBack button on the Meizu MX2, Meizu MX3 and Meizu MX4.

Recall that in the Meizu 17 series was also found an original solution for the perforation, which serves as an indicator of battery charge.

However, the biggest improvement in Flyme 9, which Meizu emphasizes, is security, in order to protect the user’s personal information. In addition to the standard Android pop-ups, with the help of which the user allows applications to access storage, phonebook, camera, microphone, etc., it controls many more permissions, and also monitors the permissions that run on the back scene. We can control how accurately our location is determined. The status bar shows what is running in the running application (camera, recording, copying, sending, etc.).

Clipboard permission settings have been increased to prevent the disclosure of personal information when the application reads or writes to the clipboard. When you send photos and the application wants to access the gallery, you can select only the photos you want to send so that the application cannot read the other photos. Artificial intelligence can control the launch of unnecessary applications…

A function for transmitting “blank information” to the application has been added. For example, if an application requires access to the phonebook, messages, call history, etc. in order to work, you can use this option and provide it with blank information.

When copying text, AI evaluates the information and the color of the copied text changes if it contains a credit card number, address, purchase details, tracking number, and other sensitive information.

Flyme 9 will receive Meizu 18 and Meizu 18 Pro, which will be presented today.

Adaptation of the new interface for Meizu 17 and Meizu 17 Pro starts on March 5, when approved test participants will receive the closed beta version over the air (OTA). The stable version is planned to be ready in May.

Flyme 9 is also under development for almost the entire 16th series (Meizu 16s Pro, Meizu 16s, Meizu 16T, Meizu 16th Plus, Meizu 16th and Meizu 16X), without Meizu 16Xs.

Flyme for Watch
Because of small displays and specifics of the hardware of smart watches, the information that we can read from them is limited. Meizu has adapted its own Flyme OS interface to improve visibility and user interaction with the watch.

The initial layout of the applications is similar to that of the Apple Watch, but the operation is different. Notifications, Wi-Fi and screen settings are displayed by swiping from top to bottom, and the control center is displayed by swiping from bottom to top.

You can choose from many screen views with rich visual effects provided by Meizu, or adjust it to your liking (DIY Clock Face, Do It Yourself).

The watch can display the same notifications as on the connected smartphone, the location of the smartphone, use the Aicy AI assistant, control the music playback and the camera shutter of the connected device.

Flyme For Warch supports third-party applications and contactless payment Meizu Pay. It is equipped with One Mind For Watch – an adaptation of Meizu’s thought engine for watches. By optimizing more than 300 elements, it improves the stability of the operating system and battery life by 70%.