Eventually it arrived to me for a long while. Vernee Thor bundle package was so simple. Like LG PRADA 3.0 leather patterned paper box, and included Thor itself, 5V 2A charger(white), rugged micro USB cable(white) and useless paper that written warranty or whatever (never read).
Outward appearance
Phone shape is just same as their rendered image. Good to hold on my single hand – nice grip feeling and bright 720p IPS LCD is just little colored as red just like tinned at low light. So I didn’t took any picture on front side.
In back side, there’s 8Mpixel camera (interpolated to 13.3Mpixel) and single LED flashlight. I could check a small fingerprint sensor downside of camera. I didn’t expected it works as like iPhone and it was a divination sign for future test !
At bottom, there’s micro USB port and a microphone hole. Headphone hole is placed upper right side of front screen. I liked this points.
Specification
Vernee thor is just one of Chinese budget smartphones. It also supports dual micro SIM and single TFlash.
- CPU : Mediatek MT6753, 8 cores @ 1.3GHz (ARM-Cortex64-A53)
- GPU : ARM MALi-T720 MP3 ( 3 cores @ 450MHz )
- RAM : DDR3-800 3GB
- eMMC : Samsung 16GB
- Display : 5″ 1280x720p IPS LCD ( looks from JDI )
- Battery : Li-Pol 2800mAh (min 2700mAh)
- OS : Android 6.0 / Marshmallow, securti patch level = very poor !
- Camera : 8Mpix (Back) , 2Mpix (Front)
- WiFi : Supports b/g/n (not supports 5GHz)
SIM & TFlash (sdcard)
Vernee has dual micro SIM slots and one TFlash slot.
Primary SIM is left side of camera and fingerprint scanner. It’s some difficult insert SIM card to slot. You may need some hand skill.
If you had succeed insert SIM, it must be like above image. I don’t know when it ejected by shock, but hodling tension is bigger than I expected.
And secondary SIM and TFlash slot is other side as like below image.
It may also need your hand skill to insert all cards to each slorts. And I found some strange point in Flash card placement as like below image.
See ? there’s some gap. my sdcard always put on dangerous situation as cracked by shock from outside as like drop to back. I really want to ask who did designed this ?
OS & Software
Thor has updated when I turn it on via OTA.
It updated 20160601 and still has 37 mediaserver vulnerable defection for CVE-2016-* as like below image. It is big problem than older Android. It is much like HELL Android. Endless security problems !
Vernee Thor using AOSP launcher 3 modified home. And you may need disable UBER and SEARCH app. Recommend to use other launcher like NOVA, default home launcher is not much comfort to use.
Android 6.0 provides useful function to use your own sdcard as internal system memory. But I don’t recommend to use it because Thor eMMC is much faster than most of UHS-1 sdcard.
I’d like recommend your sdcard as “Portable storage”. You can check internal eMMC speed at below benchmark part.
Thor eMMC performance is nice. OEM manufacturer is Samsung and model name was “RE1BMB”, 16GB capacity.
Fingerprint
It is perfectly useless. You can scan your finger and it must be used on exactly same degree put on scanner for dislock your phone. Much useless in life – it always fail to sens my finger even I registered 5 more finger data with my only one finger ! It seems just for feature availed.
Benchmark
Here some benchmarks.
Antutu scored over 37000. DDR3-800MHz copying 3.9GB/sec. eMMC writes 47MB/sec and reads over 160MB/sec. It much nice performance in similar budget phones that used MT6753.
And here some more detailed information:
Vernee Thor Antutu system information
Touch points
Supports totally 5 fingers at once. quick but really sensitive.
USB connection
Here is some strange to connect this phone to any host ( your PC ).
If I have connect Thor to my laptop, it doesn’t going to MTP, just set as USB charging everytime. So I need to change it by touching notifying area.
I can not understand why it need to change everytime. There’s no option to default what to do. Just it always set to “Charging” first.
GPS state while driving car
Some Chinese smartphones are not much accurate to use as GPS naviating app in my car. Sometimes my car doing hyper-jump to somewhere or going turn back or any degrees !
But Thor is not like that, so I have test it a day in real driving.
And I have judged it is good to use as car navigation. No GPS errors occured while driving over 20Km in around 1hour and 30minutes.
And it uphold being charged well while driving. Ulefone Paris also has nice GPS but it not uphold being charged like Thor (battery continousely discharged while driving even I have plugged 5V2A power source) But 5″ screen is little bit smaller than 5.5″. It’s up to you for using this smartphone for car navigation or not.
Conclusion
Vernee Thor was also just one of Chinese budget smartphone. I didn’t expected it is better than other, and it was right. Android 6.0 showing good performance than previous version. But it occured new vulnerable defection with mediaserver service, and most of latest Android 6.0 devices are not fixed this vulernabilities yet. Also I could not hope Vernee will fix this, but will wait for a while.
If you can buy it under 100 USD, it will good for use it your secondary or office working. Not recommended to use your primary phone. It is very dangerous to attacked by hacker with mediaserver vulnerable defection. This defection is more dangerous than before, it could not able to block by simply disable auto retrieve in MMS !
Without useless fingerprint scanner, hard to insert/change SIM and TFlash card and mediaserver defection – it could be a nice budget smartphone.