Home Hi-Tech Android World ,,,, cof,While Vernee is expected to release the expected Apollo 2 on the market, physically absent at the last MWC 17, the company tries to tease users with Vernee Mars, which takes its cue from iPhone 7, at least on the B side. test and here are lights and shadows of the terminal.
Aesthetics
Unless it is a Mi Mix, an LG G6 or a Galaxy S8 it is really difficult, nowadays, to be amazed by the aesthetics of an Android smartphone. They look alike, yet Vernee Mars has one of its strengths in the aesthetic factor. The front is completely clean, with a nice 5.5-inch display, with reduced bezels. Despite the generous diagonal, the terminal seems smaller than it is, it is held well in the hand thanks to its very low dimensions and weight: 15.1 x 7.3 x 0.76 centimeters, for 161 grams of weight. This, at least, can be read in the official data sheet, but our scale confirmed the impressions we had holding it in our hand, marking a slightly lower weight, of a few grams.
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Very nice also on the back, with the arrangement of the antennas clearly inspired by the iPhone 7, “hidden” on the upper and lower frames, with a small camera positioned on the upper left corner, slightly protruding. The mono speaker is instead positioned on the lower frame, next to the USB-C connector, which embellishes the terminal.
Touch ID
The Vernee choice that we liked the most, but which unfortunately turns out to be practically useless, is the positioning of the touch ID, which is located under the on / off button, on the right edge. The basic idea is brilliant: it allows you not to “crowd” the front, and provides optimal positioning, since the thumb ends up in that position when the terminal is held. Unfortunately, we anticipate immediately, the reader is very inaccurate.
We tried to register our fingerprint in all possible and imaginable ways, even recording the same fingerprint on all 5 slots allowed by Android. If in the first few minutes everything seems to work, in daily use the sensor recognizes the input about 3 times out of 10.
In short, after a few hours we found it necessary to disable unlocking with the fingerprint. What a pity. It is not clear, even if you want to inquire on the technical forums, if it is a hardware problem, or a poor software optimization. The fact is that the idea, at least abstractly, is to be rewarded, but then it becomes unusable from a practical point of view.
Technical features
Once the fingerprint sensor issue has been filed, we move on to the technical data sheet. Vernee Mars is a medium range, with a very competitive price, but in line with the specific offers. The heart of this smartphone is Helio P10 Mediatek, 2.0GHz 64bit octa core processor, assisted by a Mali-T860 GPU, flanked by 4 GB of RAM and 32 GB of integrated memory, expandable up to 128 GB by sacrificing one of the two slots. SIM.
The screen offers a 5.5-inch diagonal, with Full HD resolution, 5-point touch in-cell technology. It is a good unit, very bright (maybe even a little too much), which reads well in any light conditions. Touch response isn't great, and when typing very quickly on the keyboard you may miss a few letters – nothing a Swiftkey-style keyboard can't correct.
The terminal, despite some small lag, is absolutely usable for any operation, and the 4 GB of RAM also help in case you make a massive use of multitasking. You surf well, you use all the social and messaging apps; in short, Vernee Mars allows you to make full use of the Android ecosystem.
The reception is average, we did not find areas without field, as well as the audio with microphone and speakerphone is appreciable. If the volume is sufficient, the sound quality is still not excellent, it is heard without depth, and with tones tending to cold.
Camera
There are 13 megapixels on the rear and 5 MP on the front. The photos are not totally insufficient, but they are a bit fluctuating. Trying to make more shots of a subject, some are moved, others are not. In short, the sensor is not very reliable and to obtain satisfactory photographs it is advisable to take more shots. Below is a photo gallery taken with the terminal, without post production changes.
The front room, on the other hand, does not offer many ideas, and will be enough just for some Sunday selfies. The mediatek software also begins to be particularly dated, with a rather slow camera in the shot and background sounds that are no longer very modern. Again, we managed to improve the situation by downloading Open Camera, free on the Google Play Store.
Battery
The battery deserves a separate discussion. The 3,000 mAh are a bit low, certainly due to the lack of software optimization that weighs negatively on autonomy, with random battery draining phenomena.
To be completely honest, after the first few days of use, our energy consumption has stabilized, always taking us to the end of the day, even with heavy use. To do this we have set the brightness to a low level, with the option of “adaptive brightness”. It should be noted, however, that even at minimum brightness levels, the display is still very bright, readable and enjoyable, which is why we were able to obtain a good compromise between consumption and brightness.
Operating system
Vernee Mars comes home with Android 6.0 pre-installed, but it only takes two updates to bring it to the version of Nougat 7.0. However, some particularly dated applications remain, such as the Gallery, the Camera, the Calendar. To completely solve the situation, you need to download the new suite of Google apps, such as Photos, Android Messages and Google Calendar. Furthermore, we have modernized the general UI by installing, again from the Play Store, and without any modification, the Google Pixel launcher, which works perfectly and does not affect autonomy in any way.
Conclusions
Vernee Mars is an aesthetically pleasing terminal, which does not make you regret the top of the range, at least from this point of view. Too bad, however, that a poor software optimization penalizes it in some respects. In particular, if the manufacturer was able to solve the obvious problems with the fingerprint reader, it would be difficult not to recommend it in the relationship between price and performance and aesthetics.
It costs 219.99 euros on Amazon, in the two gold or black colors. Thanks to a promotion agreed with the seller, for a limited time (until Saturday 15 March) thanks to the discount code G6CFX4ZA , to be included in the Amazon cart before finalizing the purchase, you will pay only 199.99 euros .
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