Huawei without Google: isn’t that a good thing?

I see Google’s going to stop supporting Huawei as a developer. How is this a bad thing?    First, Huawei can still get the public parts of Android, since they’re open-source. Secondly, if they don’t get updates ahead of time, so what? When have western software companies rolled out bug-free updates? Based on my own […]

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The newer the Instagram, the clunkier the video

It’s been nearly one week with the new Meizu M6 Note.    It’s the “international” model, which means it’s not Chinese-spec, and there was no way to turn it into a Chinese one.    One observation is that the international one is far buggier than the Chinese one. Either that, or Android 7 is far […]

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Meizu’s made it harder to switch OSes and root the M6 Note—at least I managed the latter

Above: If phones were sentient beings, it probably is a bit mean to have the old phone take a photo of its successor. After a drop to the ground (and by that I mean the hard floor at the local Pak ’n’ Save) produced lines on the screen of my old Meizu M2 Note, I […]

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Upgrading from Flyme 6.2 on a rooted Meizu M2 Note

Since Flyme 6.2 for the Meizu M2 Note, Meizu has ceased providing automatic updates of its OS to rooted phones. There are a lot of pages and YouTube videos about unrooting, and after finding that none were relevant, I’d like to add to the din with what worked for me.    Meizu’s own instruction to […]

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Flyme to the moon

I’m really impressed with Meizu’s latest Flyme OS upgrades. I didn’t know that they were there, but then I have a lot of my notifications turned off. After discovering there was one, I went from my existing 4.5 (I had already upgraded once since I bought the phone) to 5.1, and everything worked fine. There […]

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Meizu M2 Note: welcome to a Google-free mid-2010s

Other than for the landline, I’ve never bought a phone before. Each cellphone has come as a result of a company plan or a loyalty gift from the telco, but when my Huawei Ascend Y200 began needing resets several times a day—I’ve had computer experts tell me this is the phone, or the SD card […]

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