The new Meizu 16s is my favourite ‘bezelless’ design so far

Meizu's new value flagship promises excellent hardware at a nearly unbeatable price and features my favourite take on the ‘bezelless' design yet; free of notch nor hole-punch.

Let's get something out of the way; bezels are useful.

Bezels may not be visually impressive nor outrightly functional, but they do provide the invaluable functionality of holding a device without interacting with it, as well as allowing the placement of cameras, speakers, and other sensors outside of the display.

I love nearly-bezelless designs like that of the OnePlus 6's, S10's and Mi Mix's of the world for their style, but when it comes to pure functionality I will take tiny bezels over intrusive notches, cutouts, or mechanically vulnerable sliders any day.

The somewhat obscure Chinese brand Meizu has been one of the very few to avoid adopting any of these aforementioned intrusions in their devices for the last few years, and that trend has continued with their 16s launched yesterday.

First, the specs:

The Meizu 16s from the rear is just another iClone with the left-aligned vertical camera setup which doesn't set my world on fire (I'm more of a centre-aligned vertical setup myself), however from the front the phone takes the Galaxy S9 approach of minimising bezels without harming the display to as nearer the endgame as may be possible with just a tiny forehead and even thinner chin.

The rest of the phone's hardware is great, though I'd've preferred an ultrawide second camera rather than zoom, and a different rear design as mentioned before. I especially appreciate the beefy battery and somewhat compact device size at about the same as the Galaxy S10.

The only problem I have with the device is Meizu's awful Flyme UI Android skin which really puts a damper on it, unfortunately.

The device's very reasonable price tag is definitely its biggest asset though, at around $500 you're getting a lot of hardware for your dollar.

The closest competitors to the Meizu 16s are the Xiaomi Mi 9 and Lenovo Z6 Pro, the former of which provides almost as much hardware value but generally far superior software, though many still dislike it intensely, and the latter of which is arguably better value. Both alternatives feature pimple notches however.

Overall though, the Meizu 16s offers great value in an ever-increasingly expensive industry where even former trendsetters like OnePlus are reaching for the sky.

Source: GSMARENA