Vernee V2 Pro rugged smartphone

Rugged phones and elegant edge-to-edge displays used to be mutually exclusive, but with the Vernee V2 Pro, you can finally have both. The expansive 5.99-inch screen has a very slight Samsung-style curve at the edges and is protected by a slim, but strong magnalium bezel. Strong enough for the Chinese manufacturer to promise six-sided drop resistance. However, Vernee doesn’t actually say from what height. 

There is no doubting that the V2 Pro packs a lot of features for a phone costing only around £250 (US$324, AU$450) and when you add an IP68 rating, you have a tempting proposition for anyone who relies heavily on their phone while working outdoors. The battery is unusually large at 6.2Ah, which means you can keep working for around four days of regular use without recharging. It’s faster than your typical tough phone too and has the latest version Android (Oreo) on board. 

Design

The sleek Vernee V2 Pro doesn’t look like a rugged phone from the front at all, but that tough magnalium case is apparently enough to earn an IP68 certificate. That means it can survive 1.5-meters under water for two hours, is impervious to dust, and work in temperatures ranging from -30 to 60-degrees Centigrade. Vernee says it is also drop resistant on all sides, though there is no certificate for that. It is definitely available in red, or black, as seen here though. 

The distinctively dimpled back panel is textured to enhance your grip and Vernee claims the material also repels dirt, although as you can see in the photo, we managed to find some that stuck. It certainly makes it easier to hold and so does the 18:9 ratio screen. A six-inch phone in 16:9 ratio would be harder to reach your fingers around. Also on the back are a dual-lens camera, LED flash/torch, a fingerprint reader and a heart rate monitor. This last is a welcome addition for an action phone and it works well. 

There is only one socket at the side because the type C USB port works for sharing data, recharging and also as a headphone port. A USB-C to minijack adapter is included. This versatile port also allows for fast 9V/2A charging, which almost makes up for the fact that the Vernee V2 Pro does not support wireless charging. 

There are only three buttons on the Vernee V2 Pro, an on/off button (of course), a volume rocker (naturally) and a button that takes a screenshot (why?).  We can only assume that this is a mistake that somehow made it all the way to production, because there are so many things that third button could have been: a camera shutter button perhaps, or PTT (push to talk), or an emergency SOS sender, or a torch app. When you’re working outside there are plenty of functions that you’d love to access without having to take off your gloves and navigate an onscreen menu, but taking a screenshot is NOT one of them. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that this button is on a hair trigger and you can’t help but press it almost every time you hold the handset, so by the end of the review we had to delete hundreds of accidental screenshots. All that’s needed is a firmware update, or an app to reassign this rogue function button, but at the time of review, there was no solution.

Specifications

The Vernee V2 Pro ticks most of the boxes on our feature list for a rugged phone and its technical specifications trump most of the other models in this category. The screen is a luxurious six inches across (or as near as makes no difference) and its Full HD, unlike the Blackview BV5800, which is only HD. The main camera is 21MP with a 5MP companion lens for getting that bokeh effect. Sadly there’s no optical zoom. 

In addition to the biometric fingerprint reader, you can also sign in with Face ID, which is less secure, but preferable when you’ve got your hands full. The SIM card tray will actually hold two nano SIMs and a TF card, which could expand the phone’s memory by128GB. 

The processor is a modest Helio P23, but teamed with a generous 6GB of RAM and 64GB of ROM, it produced respectable results in our processing bench tests. It is certainly powerful enough to run Android Oreo 8.1 smoothly and drive apps that make good use of the phone’s compass, pedometer and gyroscope. 

At 6200 mAh the battery is both big and clever. It makes the Vernee V2 Pro feel as heavy as two Samsung Galaxy S9s, but it makes it last for 35 days in standby. Curiously, the specifications are in some key cases slightly lower than those of the Vernee Active, which was launched first, even though this model is more expensive. It means that the slightly larger battery and screen are what you are paying for here.

In use

The first thing you notice about the Vernee V2 Pro is its weight. While it looks like a regular phablet from the front, it is all glass, battery and metal, which adds-up to a pocket sagging 259g. It weren’t for the textured back panel it would be easy to drop because the sides are smooth rather than rubberised. 

The almost edge-to-edge screen looks great in Full HD resolution and the 18:9 ratio is an advantage when you’re scrolling, or using Google Maps for navigation on your handlebars. Widescreen video content doesn’t fit quite so well of course. 

Android runs smoothly and Vernee hasn’t bothered to apply much of a skin, or pre-load any software specific to a rugged phone, but our test apps worked well. Other than the reinforced casing, the design hasn’t been adapted in any way for the outdoor worker and it is somewhat frustrating to use with gloves on because there are no hard shortcut buttons – unless you want to take a screenshot of course. 

The camera app is average and the dual lens enables features such as FaceBeauty, although that’s not a feature you’ll need much on a building site. More importantly, the processor makes the camera and all the other apps work quickly and image quality is quite good in high and low light. Graphics-heavy games run relatively smoothly on the Vernee V2 Pro, although 3D games suffer from judder. In short, it handles like your average budget phablet with the added advantage of an IP68 rating and much longer battery life.  

Final verdict

The Vernee V2 Pro succeeds in combining a luxuriously large full HD screen with a big battery in a rugged case that keeps its profile as sleek as a regular phablet. Its specifications are impressive for a budget handset too, which means Android Oreo 8.1 runs seamlessly. But with the screen being made of the same Gorilla Glass as almost every other phone, we’re sceptical of the six-sided drop resistance claims, especially as no test height has been given. And without any features tailored to the outdoor worker, such as a hard PTT button for walkie-talkie style comms, or any relevant pre-loaded software, we wouldn’t recommend the Vernee V2 Pro above cheaper options such as the Blackview BV5800 Pro. 

• We've also highlighted the best rugged phones of 2018 in this roundup