In the second half of last year, phone maker Vernee
launched its bargain-priced Mars — a thin, stylish, and powerful handset that
didn't require one to break the bank to get. Now, the company is going full
steam ahead and releasing the reiteration of the Mars, called the Mars Pro.
The new phone shares a lot with its older sibling —
it has slim, 1 mm side bezels around the screen, ensuring that the 5.5-inch
display doesn't translate into a hard-to-handle handset. The metallic body is
overall quite slim as well, measuring at 7.6 mm despite the fact that
it houses a rather generous 3,500 mAh battery.
The Mars Pro turns the dial up when it comes to
hardware. An octa-core MediaTek Helio P25 SoC is its beating heart, assisted by
6 GB of RAM — a fair amount by all accounts. The onboard storage is locked at
64 GB, which is still quite good. The display panel is built by JDI and
provides a 178-degree viewing angle and a 95% coverage of the NTSC gamut as per
official claims.
As can be expected, the phone ships with Android 7
Nougat pre-installed and it's in a pretty close-to-vanilla condition. Future
updates are not out of the picture, too, considering that the Vernee Mars,
which shipped with Android 6 Marshmallow, was updated to Nougat not long after
Google's latest OS became official.
The back snapper has a Sony-made IMG258 13 MP sensor
and a lens with a fairly wide aperture – F2.0. The camera is quick to focus
thanks to phase detection autofocus tech and it's assisted by a dual-tone LED
flash for natural colors in the darkest of moments. The selfie cam is a more
modest 5 MP one.
The Mars Pro is currently in a
pre-sale stage and can be ordered for US$ 179.99. Come July the 4th, that promo
price will rise up to US$ 199.99, which is still a bargain price point for what we
get.