Vernee Mars Review

Vernee is the brand, under which Shenzhen New-Bund Network Technology Co., Ltd., or simply New-Bund, entered the smartphone market in February 2016. For a very short time it managed to establish itself as a reliable smartphone manufacturer. Currently, on the spotlight is the third official model of the company - Vernee Mars. It has already entered its pre-sale period, during which it retails at around USD 250, and the owners of the first units will receive them in a few days, if everything goes to plan. We have received a prototype of Vernee Mars for review and are very eager to discover what the device looks and performs like. The Apollo Lite managed to leave excellent impressions with us, so expectations are high and without further ado let's go over the official specifications.

Specifications

Vernee Mars features an all-metal unibody graced by a 5.5-inch IPS display with a 1080p resolution. The screen is made by Sharp and employs an in-cell TDDI technology. It is protected by a Corning Gorilla Glass 3 with a 2.5D curved top glass layer. Viewing angles are specified as being 178°, the contrast ratio is 1000:1 and the display panel covers 95% of the NTSC color space. Hardware-wise, the smartphone is based on a MediaTek Helio P10 MT6755 chipset, which has become a classic SoC among mid-range devices. It includes four 2GHz Cortex-A53 cores and another quadruplet of the same, but clocked at 1GHz. The octa-core CPU is coupled with a dual-core Mali-T860 MP2 GPU clocked at 700MHz and 4GB of LPDDR3, single-channel RAM clocked at 933MHz. The on-board storage is eMMC 5.0 type and measures 32GB (expandable). The camera department of the model includes a 13-megapixel primary shooter that is equipped with a Sony IMX258 Exmor RS sensor and a 6-element lens with an f/2.0 aperture and an RWB color-pattern filter. Their work is aided by a dual-tone LED flash and phase detection AF. The selfie camera relies on a 5-megapixel Samsung S5K5E2 sensor. The smartphone is powered by a 3000 mAh Li-Pol, non-removable battery with Vernee's take on fast charging technology, called Vcharge. The device runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow out-of-the-box, but there are also demo versions of it running Android 7.0 Nougat, so an OTA update is expected very soon. Regarding network connectivity and wireless options, Vernee Mars supports quad-band 2G GSM (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz), dual-band 3G W-CDMA (900, 2100 MHz), and quad-band 4G LTE Cat. 4 (800, 1800, 2100, 2600 MHz) networks along with dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, 802.11n 5GHz, Wi-Fi Hotspot, Wi-Fi Direct, and Bluetooth 4.0. The smartphone works with GPS and Glonass, and is equipped with a USB Type-C 2.0 with OTG support and a side-mounted fingerprint sensor. A complete list of the specifications of Vernee Mars can be found here.

What's in the box

You will discover Vernee Mars inside a beautiful, rectangular white box with a nice raised pattern. It has the model's name written in silver on the lid and some basic information about it on the bottom. The set of accessories is standard. The smartphone is placed on the top level compartment and the bottom one contains a 5V;7V;9V/2A and 12V/1.2A charger, a USB to USB Type-C 2.0 cable, a SIM-tray pin, and a user manual.

Design and build

Prior to releasing the Vernee Mars officially, the company launched a number of news-teasers, which revealed some of the more specific design details of the model. The first and most basic characteristic is that it has an all-metal unibody design. This means that the body is made of a single slit of aluminum alloy. The production process includes 24 times of adjustment, nano molding technology, 3D polishing and pure CNC in order to achieve precision and beautiful texture. Indeed, the lightweight body has a nice matte finish. The back edges are finely polished - they provide excellent definition without being too sharp to the touch. The transition to the frame, which is an integral part of a unibody design, is seamless. It, then finishes in very thin front edges, which are chamfered and glossy for a difference. They seamlessly bond with the 2.5D curved glass of the display and definitely provide a pleasant touch experience, while working with the device. A good design feature of Vernee Mars is that it is one of the most compact and lightweight smartphones with a 5.5-inch display and a 3000 mAh battery. For starters, its width measures only 73 mm, making it one of the most narrow smartphones in its size class. The height of 151.6 mm is one of the lowest for 5.5-inch devices, so are the waistline of 7.6 mm and the weight of 161 grams. Furthermore, the manufacturer has managed to achieve the impressive 81% of screen-to-body-ratio, which actually depicts the percentage of the frontal surface of the device taken by the display. The very thin frame is complemented by 1 mm-thin bezels. The overall handling, viewing and touch experience with the Vernee Mars is excellent. The smartphone is available in gold, grey and dark blue colors, we are reviewing a gold colored unit and we must say that we have been skeptical about the color, but it's a nice subtle champagne gold one that looks stylish. The controls layout is typical for a Vernee smartphone with a distinctive feature being the side-mounted fingerprint sensor. Just like in Apollo Lite, the one of the Vernee Mars is placed on the right frame, right below the volume and power buttons. However, in our review unit the fingerprint sensor is not aligned with the frame. It is obvious that it does not fit very well in its place. This does not affect its performance, at least not in a noticeable level, but is a design problem that should be addressed. Actually, the hybrid, dual-SIM tray, placed on the opposite side (the left frame) has the same problem. It opens and closes easily, but is not vertically aligned and this is seen with naked eye. It very well may be that only our review unit has such issues as it is one of the very first units of pre-production. All the rest is very solid and well-made. On the top frame a 3.5 mm jack is placed, while the bottom one features a microphone hole, a USB Type-C 2.0 port and a grille for a single speaker. On the back, the primary camera and the accompanying it dual-tone LED flash are positioned in the top left corner. The Vernee logo and model name are printed at the lower end. An interesting design feature of the back is the arc design of the antenna bands, which very much resembles the one of the Meizu Pro 6. On the front of the smartphone, above the display, from left to right, you'll see the selfie camera, earpiece, light and proximity sensors. Below the display, the area is empty as the only type of navigation bar you get is an on-screen one. From the corresponding menu in the Settings you can tweak its behaviour and appearance.

Display

Like many other smartphone manufacturers from China, Vernee has opted for a 5.5-inch IPS display made by Sharp. However, we have already witnessed how one and the same display (in terms of basic specifications) yields very different results, so we will definitely delve into it. For starters, the screen employs a full in-cell technology combined with a Touch and Display Driver Integration (TDDI) one. This usually reduces power consumption, improves touch performance, and allows the display units to become more affordable and faster to produce. The display panel has a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels, a static contrast ratio of 1000:1, 178° viewing angles and covers 95% of the NTSC color space. Protection is ensured by a Corning Gorilla Glass 3 with a 2.5D curved glass screen. As long as it concerns peak brightness, the display of Vernee Mars is not the brightest one we've seen, but is good enough. Its top luminance measures 319 cd/sq.m. at the brightness set at 100%. It gradually decreases with the lowering of the brightness percentage and so do the black luminance values. However, the white and black luminance values do not decrease proportionally, hence, the static contrast ratio varies a lot (from 1200:1 to 2200:1) and is not consistent, which is not a sign of excellent quality. Moreover, it is very far from what the official specifications say. Probably the temperature of the white point will compensate this. It is not excellent, but is within a tolerable range and is very consistent at all brightness levels - 7700 K.

Brightness	White luminance	Black luminance	Contrast	Color temperature
100 %	318.723 cd/m2	0.162 cd/m2	1967 : 1	7741 K
75 %	232.492 cd/m2	0.116 cd/m2	2004 : 1	7703 K
50 %	157.114 cd/m2	0.084 cd/m2	1870 : 1	7677 K
25 %	89.18 cd/m2	0.044 cd/m2	2027 : 1	7683 K
0 %	13.517 cd/m2	0.012 cd/m2	1126 : 1	7772 K

Similar to other devices using a Sharp display with 95% coverage of the NTSC color space, we happen to discover that this percentage is not correct. The CIE diagram shows a coverage that is only marginally higher than sRGB and would probably equal 75% of the NTSC gamut. In addition, there are deviations in all three main color areas - blue, green, and red. The display panel has a traditional striped sub-pixel arrangement. Viewing angles are specified as being 178-degree, but it is obvious that, though colors are preserved, there is a noticeable loss in brightness, especially at the vertical angles and the display looks much darker when looked from aside.

OS, UI and software

Vernee Mars runs stock Android 6.0 Marshmallow out-of-the box. The lock screen has a standard outline with shortcuts to the Dialer, Camera app and Unlock. By default, the Notifications and Quick settings appear on it. The home screen has two rows of apps, the lower one is docked and includes the Dialer, Contacts, App tray icon, Messenger, and Browser. The upper row of apps includes the Camera, Gallery, Settings and Play Store. If you want you can add another row of apps above it and change the places of the apps or entirely remove them. Clicking on the clock widget opens the Clock app. The App tray icon opens the list with apps, which are listed alphabetically on one screen that is scrollable. If you install additional apps, they will appear on successive screens, which can also be accessed by swiping left from the home screen. The list of active apps can be accessed by tapping on the Menu button from the Navigation bar. The latter is on-screen only and you can choose its layout from the settings. Pressing and holding on an empty space on the home screen opens the Widgets menu. It includes options for changing the wallpaper of the home screen and the lock screen, adding widgets from a standard list, and settings, which include only one option - disabled auto rotation. The Notifications shade is accessed after a single swipe downwards from the top of the display and a second swipe brings up the Quick Settings. The Volume and Power off menus are standard. The Settings menu of Vernee Mars offers no surprises. It consists of four major groups of options and by default, the first one is the Wireless & networks, which lets you manage your Wi-Fi connections, Data usage, SIM cards, Bluetooth, and so on. The second group of settings is named Device and it helps you manage the Display, Sound & notifications, Apps, Storage & USB, Battery, and Memory. In order to tweak the display you can use the MiraVision feature, which in Vernee Mars lets you adjust the Picture mode, Dynamic contrast and the BluLight Defender. Under Display you may also manage the wallpapers, change the font size, brightness level, and switch on the Daydream function that serves as kind of a screensaver. The Sound & notification set of options is classic and includes the four pre-set sound profiles with options for additional editing, notifications and DND mode settings as well as the Beh sound enhancement features. The Apps management is standard, too, and lets you manage app permissions and links, modify the system settings, draw over other apps, etc. Storage, battery and memory monitoring are self-explanatory, the battery one will be described in a bit more detail in the corresponding section of this review. Personal is the third main set of options and contains tools for managing your Location, Security, Accounts, Google, Language & input, Backup & reset. All of these are not altered in any way. As expected, the Security settings contain the options for creating and managing fingerprint IDs. You can store up to 5 IDs, but there are no other options for them besides phone unlocking. When you set up a password for your device you activate the SmartLock function. With it you can choose your smartphone to remain unlocked when it's on you, in trusted places, near trusted devices, and faces. The Google account management is a whole new group in Android M and contains additional tools for security, content sharing and synchronization, etc. The apps in Vernee Mars are accessed from the App tray icon. As mentioned earlier, the apps are listed in alphabetical order on a single scrollable screen as well as in successive screens accessible by swiping to the left, so you have two ways to suit your preferences at any time. The pre-installed apps includes Backup and Reset, Browser, Calculator, Calendar, Camera, Clock, Contacts, Downloads, Email, File Manager, FM Radio, Gallery, Messaging, Music, Phone, Play Store, Search, Settings, SIM Toolkit, Sound Recorder. All provide a standard set of features and options.

Networks, calls and connectivity

Vernee Mars is equipped with a dual-SIM card tray, which can house either a micro-SIM and a nano-SIM card, or a micro-SIM and a microSD card for the cases, in which the built-in storage is not enough. The official specifications point that the device supports quad-band 2G GSM (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz), dual-band 3G W-CDMA (900, 2100 MHz), and quad-band 4G FDD-LTE Cat. 4 (800, 1800, 2100, 2600 MHz) networks. However, MTK Engineering Mode shows that it supports W-CDMA 850 and 1900 MHz as well as 4G TDD-LTE 2300 MHz (B40). The call quality is fine and we haven't experienced any issues in this regard. The model supports dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and 802.11n 5GHz, strangely enough no a/ac. It also provides Wi-Fi Hotspot, Wi-Fi Direct and Wi-Fi Display (cast screen) functions along with Bluetooth 4.0 support. The device arrives with a built-in Turbo Download function as well. As long as it concerns satellite navigation, with Vernee Mars you can rely on GPS and Glonass. Satellites are detected fast and with very good accuracy. Finally, the smartphone is equipped with a USB Type-C 2.0 port with OTG support.

Performance

Unlike the very first rumours prior to its official announcement, Vernee Mars is based on a MediaTek Helio P10 MT6755 chipset. This is one of the most widely used system-on-chips for mid-range devices and is designed to optimize both performance and power efficiency. It includes an octa-core CPU with eight Cortex-A53 cores - four clocked at 2GHz and the other four - at 1GHz. There's a dual-core Mali-T860 MP2 GPU clocked at 700MHz responsible for the graphics. We have already tested many smartphones based on Helio P10 and Vernee Mars managed to score higher than all of them with 51213 points in AnTuTu. It is followed by Ulefone Future (50939), Gionee S8 (50616), and UMi Plus. Of course, the differences in absolute value are marginal, still, this is an important fact to be mentioned. Evidently Vernee was able to squeeze most of the chipset's juice, just like it did with the Apollo Lite, which also scored higher than other smartphone with the same chipset (Helio X20). Vernee Mars shows higher results than other Helio P10-based smartphones in almost all other benchmark tests. For sure you'll be able to enjoy a plethora of games, except those with heavy graphics. You can play them too, but not at the highest graphics level. Vernee Mars is equipped with 4GB of LPDDR3, single-channel RAM clocked at 933MHz. The RAM is very generous and suits the P10 fine. The storage is eMMC 5.0 type and measures 32GB, of which 25GB are available to the user. The PCMark Storage and Androbench tests show very good results that are on par with the results of other smartphones with the same type and amount of built-in memory. The storage is expandable. There's a standard set of sensors on board as well, including a light, proximity, orientation, accelerometer, gyroscope, gravity, magnetometer sensor, etc. The model features Vernee's signature side-mounted fingerprint sensor. As we have already pointed out earlier, the sensor of our review unit is not mounted straight, but it does work. This is a prototype unit, however, so Vernee can correct this in a timely manner. Setting up a fingerprint ID is a standard process and you can store up to five IDs. The only function available for all of them is unlocking the device.

Cameras

The camera app is very standard. The home screen contains a shutter button and a video one along with a settings icon and shortcuts to HDR, flash, camera switch and so on. The settings do not offer anything more than the usual choice of resolution, scene mode, exposure, white balance, face detection, and so on. It's almost the same with the front-facing snapper. Photo editing options include application of filters and effects, cropping, rotating or otherwise adjusting the picture as well as adjusting the contrast, exposure, autocolor, shadows, etc.

Primary camera

Vernee Mars is equipped with a 13-megapixel primary camera with a Sony IMX258 Exmor RS sensor. It is coupled a 6-element lens with an f/2.0 aperture. An RWB color-pattern filter ensures better photos under low light conditions. The camera is aided by a dual-tone LED flash and phase-detection auto-focus. It makes photos with a resolution of 4208 x 3120 pixels and shoots 1080p videos at 30 fps. Below you can see some photo samples and one video made with the Vernee Mars' camera. The same sensor powers the main camera of Xiaomi Redmi Pro and Elephone P9000, so you can check them out and compare. It is clearly seen that the camera makes the colors look warmer than they actually are mainly because the greens are hued to look more yellowish. You can compare the photos from the rear and front camera, and see this for yourself.

Secondary camera

The secondary camera of Vernee Mars features a 5-megapixel Samsung S5K5E2, which is used mainly in entry-level smartphones. It makes photos with a resolution of 2560 x 1920 pixels and shoots 720p videos at 30 fps.

Audio

There is no special music app developed for the Vernee Mars. The default one is pretty straightforward and provides grouping of audio files according to albums, artists, songs, and playlists. The equalizer lets you choose from several audio profiles, including a flat one as well as from several stereo effects. The main screen of the app is standard with some media from the album you're listening to and vaious options such as shuffle, re-play, and so on. Vernee Mars does not have a special audio equipment. The device excels only in frequency response, while the THD + Noise is rated as Average. All other parameters are evaluated as being Very good, so is the final result. We perform all audio tests by using the RightMark Audio Analyzer software and the TASCAM US-2x2 audio interface. According to our subjective view on the matter, the speaker does not provide a very good sound.

Test	Value	RMAA rating
Frequency response (from 40 Hz to 15 kHz), dB	+0.00, -0.13	Excellent
Noise level, dB (A)	-94.2	Very Good
Dynamic range, dB (A)	94.2	Very Good
THD, %	0.0097	Very good
THD + Noise, dB (A)	-77.5	Average
IMD + Noise, %	0.0011	Very good
Stereo crosstalk, dB	-82.6	Very good
IMD at 10 kHz, %	0.018	Very good
General performance		Very good

Battery

Vernee Mars is equipped with a 3000 mAh Li-Pol battery that is non-removable and arrives with a fast charger that has an output power of 5V;7V;9V/2A and 12V/1.5A. It supports Vcharge - Vernee's interpretation on fast charging technology - "combination of hardware design and software optimization for fast and safe charging". The battery can be monitored and managed only slightly from the corresponding menu in the Settings. For starters, it contains a monitor for the battery usage and a toggle for switching on/off the intelligent power saving mode. There's an option to optimize one or more apps for improved battery performance as well as activating the battery saver function. The graph below demonstrates the charging rate of the review unit and the battery temperature during charging. For the first 7 minutes charging was slow and at 12 minutes were reached the first 10% of charge. The speed, then, increased and for another 45 minutes the battery reached 80% of its capacity. After that the speed started slowing down, while at 90% it dropped down significantly. The last 10% to 100% needed 35 minutes to charge. It took 1 hour and 42 minutes for the battery to be charged from 0 to 100%. Charging started with the battery's temperature being 29°C and immediately began to increase till it reached 45°C at 50% of the charge. This temperature had been maintained for the next 18 minutes till the battery reached 75% and then started decreasing, especially after 90% of the capacity was reached. At the end the battery's temperature was 27°C. Regarding battery life, PCMark's Work battery life test showed a result of 5 hours and 50 minutes, which is far from excellent.

Final thoughts

Probably the best feature of Vernee Mars is its compact design. If you're looking for a smartphone with a 5.5-inch display that really provides you with the handling experience of a 5-inch device, then the Mars should be in your list of smartphones to choose from. If the company addresses the little design issues mentioned above, the build would be excellent, too. The camera and display are not bad, while the device manages to take most out of the horsepower of its chipset. The battery could give a day of normal usage, but at the end of the day it would need charging for sure. Overall, it is a very good smartphone on its own right.