MEIZU m3s launched with an all metal body, costs just over $100

MEIZU has officially launched a metal variant of its budget friendly MEIZU m3. Dubbed the MEIZU m3s it keeps most features of its predecessor, while adding a fingerprint reader along with the metal body. And like the m3, it is very wallet friendly at just RMB 699 (about $109) for the 16GB version.

The m3s is a 5-inch handset, featuring a 720p display resolution and slightly curved 2.5D glass. It comes in two memory configurations, the first with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage, while the second features 3GB RAM and 32GB of storage space. The Meizu m3s also comes with an f/2.2, 13 megapixel rear camera that uses a 5-element lens. The f/2.0, 5 megapixel front facing camera uses a 4-element lens.

Like the m3 before it, the m3s uses a MediaTek MT6750 processor, which boasts eight Cortex-A53 CPU cores, four clocked at 1.5GHz and four clocked at 1.0GHz. The GPU on the MT6750 is the ARM Mali T860. While many of the specs remain the same as the m3, the battery size does see a boost at 3020 mAh, up from 2870 mAh.

The two big ticket items are the metal body and the fingerprint reader. According to MEIZU the m3s is built using a 360 degree sandblasting technique to give it a “delicate and soft-to-touch texture.” As for the fingerprint reader, it offers a 0.2 second unlock time due to a newly designed fingerprint recognition algorithm, which has also improved the accuracy.

The m3s is available in silver, gray, gold, and rose gold from RMB 699 (around $109) for the 16GB variant, or RMB 899 (around $140) for the 32GB model. For those outside of China looking to buy the m3s there are two important things to note: 1) You need to check the compatibility of the 3G and 4G frequencies to make sure it will work with your carrier. 2) The m3s doesn’t run stock Android, it uses the Flyme 5.1 operating system, which is a heavily customized version of Android.

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