The Vernee Apollo was dropped into a pretty heavily saturated phone market. You have phones like the Redmi Note 4 and LeEco phones that represent much better price to performance ratios, and Vernee’s own Apollo Lite (review here) could be seen as cannabalizing the Apollo’s sales.
Vernee Apollo Second Opinion
To be honest, I’m not quite sure what the Vernee Apollo offers that the Vernee Apollo Lite does not, especially considering the slight price discrepancy. The differences include a 2K screen, an overclocked Helio X20 processor, and a different camera.
That’s not to say the Vernee Apollo is a bad phone though. I share quite a few of the same sentiments as our very own Pierre (who reviewed the phone), but a few differing ones as well.
Value?
Vernee Apollo Specifications
| Processor | Mediatek Helio X25 Processor |
| Display | 5.5″ 2560×1440 px, LCD |
| RAM | 4GB |
| Storage | 64GB eMMC |
| Operating System | Android 6.0 Marshmallow |
| Cameras | 22/8MP Camera |
| Battery | 3180mAh |
| Physical Dimensions | 0.188kg, 15.20 x 7.56 x 0.93 cm |
Big thanks to Gearbest for providing this review unit.
Vernee Apollo Hardware
In terms of build quality, the Vernee Apollo is my favourite phone by far. The sand-blasted aluminum unibody definitely outclasses many devices out there and is something I would pick over a glass encased phone (ahem Zuk) in a heartbeat. It feels a bit thick considering there’s only a 3180mAh battery in there and a protruding camera module. Overall though, the Apollo is my absolute favourite.
I recently dropped the Apollo onto dirty concrete and there is sadly a small scratch on the corner and a couple of small nicks on the glass as well, but the glass scratches are well obscured by the multitude of smudges left by my fingers.
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“Incredible build”
Vernee Apollo Display
The display quality is one area where my opinions differ from Pierre’s. While objectively the screen is sharp, the difference in sharpness just doesn’t do enough for me to justify using a 2K display. I would rather take the slight increase in battery life that comes from using a 1080p display.
Again, objectively the colours on this phone are quite accurate, definitely closer to Nexus 5 levels of accurate than AMOLED displays, but with a bit more obvious pop added in. It is a lot easier to think that completely oversaturated and inaccurate displays look “better” than accurate and well calibrated (yet seemingly washed out) displays like what we find here.
The state of colour calibration in Android handsets is rather indicative of how OEMs use oversaturated screens to pull customers over to their own device, the same way TVs in Big Box stores do as well.
That’s not the say that the screen is bad, it is just calibrated more towards colour accuracy than it is towards saturation, and that can be adjusted slightly using the included Miravision.
Vernee Apollo …Meh
There are a couple of things that had me go… meh. First of all is battery life. After the recent January OTA update I experienced slightly better battery life. In fact I was able to get around 6 hours of screen on time over 12 hours, which doesn’t impress me in the slightest but is actually a very good score for a 3180mAh battery powering a 2K display and an overclocked processor. Audio while incredibly loud, isn’t great quality either.
Vernee Apollo Verdict
I’m not sure Vernee needed to release the Apollo, not when they had a popular phone in the Vernee Apollo Lite. The Vernee Apollo is built like a flagship and has specs like a flagship as well, but it sits in a market saturated with competition.
Yes, the phone is built impeccably, but there are too many other phones that provide similar specifications for less.
“An expensive starting price”
I wouldn’t buy a 5.5 inch phone that weighed 188 grams. Even 175 grams is on the heavy side (Xiaomi Redmi Note 4) when the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge is only 158 grams. The Meizu Pro 6 Plus with a 5.7 inch display is also only 158 grams. I look at bulk when I consider what new phone to buy; that means minimal non-screen real estate and minimum weight, preferably not more than 160 grams for a 5.5 inch phone and not more than 145 grams for a 5 inch phone. The Xiaomi Mi 5 was fantastic in this respect at only 129 grams!
Do you have a hard limit on the maximum weight a phone can be or is it just the ratio of weight to screen size? Because those maximum numbers you put on each screen size would rule out many metal phones (or phones with huge batteries). Also are you willing to sacrifice performance for weight as long as it still performs OK? There are many light devices in the entry level segment of the market.
Just ratio of weight to screen size. It’s not that I can’t handle a heavy phone, it just seems to me that a more compact phone – size and weight – is better built, more elegant, classy, better designed. The Xiaomi Redmi 3 series had big batteries but were only 144 grams. As I said in my original comment, the Xiaomi Mi 5 was a very light phone but still had good battery life and performance. I take this as a benchmark. I’d actually rather have a plastic phone if it was lighter – I put a TPU case on all my phones so I don’t care what they are made of. Some of Sony’s high end phones are not metal but they don’t feel cheap either.
Personally I prefer a heavier phone but for me the weight is one of the last things I look at.