Vernee is a relatively unknown Chinese smartphone maker which is trying to make it in the competitive mobile market. A few months ago we told you about the Vernee Apollo which tries to present itself as a worthy OnePlus 3T alternative.
Now the company is focusing all its energies on the Apollo X model, which according to the information we’re getting will be shipping out with some interesting features.
You might remember that we talked about Remix OS for Mobile – a custom ROM which aims to transform your Android smartphone into a PC. Well Vernee is hoping to achieve something similar with the Apollo X.
The Apollo X is poised to take advantage of a similar solution dubbed OXI Desktop. Basically OXI will allow owners of the Apollo X run multi-window mode on their smartphone or tablet – which is said makes the Android feel more like a desktop OS.
Additionally, users will be able to cast the multi-window environment to an external display while remaining in full-screen mode on their mobile device. Basically the OXI behaves in the likeness of Microsoft’s Continuum. And like the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S8’s DeX Station.
However, while the Galaxy S8 DeX is actually a dock, Vernee’s Apollo X is said to come pre-installed with OXI which is called a software adaptation.
Regardless, the result is bound to be the same. You’ll be able to switch the entire content from the smartphone’s display to a massive monitor for a clean and clutter-less desktop experience.
The phone made an appearance at MWC 2017 with a 5.5-inch display with 1080 x 1920 resolution and a deca-core MediaTek Helio X20 chipset under the hood working hand in hand with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage.
The Vernee Apollo X is currently available for pre-order on Gearbest for $219.99 a pop.
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The outside of the earcups have a dotted design and the left has a pressable button. A short press of the button plays or pauses and a long press opens up Google Assistant on my OnePlus 3T. It’s a nice intersection of form and functionality. The microphone bump that sits just below the earcups is able to pick up my voice clearly and people on the other end of calls said I sounded just fine.
Another area where these are a miss on is how they fit. It feels like Xiaomi made the band that sits on top of your head too long. These would sit wonderfully on the round head of an emoji, but for real world, it should have been a bit more narrow.
The headphones don’t squeeze my head at all, which is nice for comfort but can make them come off my head when whipping around to talk to someone standing behind me. Luckily the earcups are pretty deep and hold a little bit or it would be a dire situation. The cups hold these to your head and do it very comfortably. The soft leather-ish pads are extremely comfortable and are among the best I’ve ever felt.
Would I give my Sennheisers up for these? No, but I also don’t recommend going out and spending $100 extra dollars on something like that unless you have the cash to toss away. I find that the listening experience is almost as good as my HD598s and that’s pretty incredible when you take into account the price difference ($150 vs. $30)
The setup for Cornerfly is straightforward, but there are a couple of permissions it needs to run. First, you need to enable System Overlay to allow it to draw over other apps. This is what allows it to create the actual round corners on the display. Second, you need to grant it access to Accessibility Service so it can put a permanent notification in your notification shade that allows for quick tuning of the corners on a per-app basis. I have to commend Cornerfly for explaining exactly why it needs these permissions when it asks you for them. It lets you know that there is nothing shady going on behind the scenes. After you grant these two permissions, you are taken directly into the app, and your round corners will be there to great you.
After a couple of weeks using Cornerfly, I must say I love the look of rounded corners. I am using on an Alcatel IDOL 4S, which has an AMOLED display. I am not sure how good this would look on a device without an AMOLED display. Since this display shows pure black for the rounded corners, they blend in seemlessly with the body, and it is convincing that the display actually has rounded corners. I am not sure if it would have the same effect on a display with a backlight.
Cornerfly is extremely simply to use and customize. In fact, you could exit the app right after setup, and I doubt you would ever need to open it again. However, there are some neat features in the app to fine tune your experience. We are looking at the Plus version (which is only a $0.99 in-app purchase away), but almost every feature will be available in the free version as well. Aside from removing advertising, the only feature added with the Plus version is the option to change corner sizing. With this feature, you can choose just how curved the corners of your display are. Although this is a pretty fun feature, I found that the default corner size was just fine and probably won’t bother anyone.
There is a persistent Cornerfly notification that you can disable in the app, but I recommend leaving it enabled. The notification is located at the bottom of your notifications, and can actually come in handy. It gives you quick access to customize Cornerfly based on the app your in. You can have the corners be above or below the status bar, above or below the navigation bar (if you have on-screen buttons), and just disable Cornerfly in that app completely. If you are super picky about what shows up in your notification shade, you can disable it, but I would keep it for the quick customization options.
According to the images, the ZTE Quartz features e metal design and a button located on the right side. The report tells us the Quartz doesn’t come with NFC onboard, which means no Android Pay functionality just like in the case of the 
The prototype watch showed in the images runs Android Wear 2.0 on top of Android 7.1.1 Nougat. However, when it launches on the market Android Wear 2.0 will probably take over all operations.
We should also note there’s no rotating crown like on the LG Watch Style, but given that this is in all possibility a prototype maybe the consumer-ready product will come with one. It’s just speculation from my part.
Anyway, ZTE was heard saying that the Quartz will be offered with one of the four major carriers. Will it be Verizon or AT&T? Or maybe Sprint.
We can’t say at this moment, but I believe we won’t be left waiting long before the ZTE Quartz makes a formal debut into the wild.
With the advent of smartphones, feature phones have been losing their appeal. However, new arrivals like the Nokia 3310 have shown that people wouldn’t say no to a sleek feature phone. Although the Nokia 3310 does have an advantage over other models – it appeals to customers’ nostalgia.
The Qualcomm 205 Mobile Platform is actually a dual-core processor clocked at 1.1GHz with Adreno 304 GPU which should prove more than enough to sustain all the activities onboard a feature phone. The SoC is designed to support a Linux based OS, up to 3MP rear and selfie camera, 720p video streaming at 30fps and eMMC 4.5 flash storage an LPDDR2/LPDDR3 RAM.
Qualcomm is expected to partner up with device manufacturers which are targeting emerging markets such as India, where the love for feature phones is still big. Phones with the new platform are expected to become available in Q3 from companies like Micromax, TCL, HiPad or CKT.
As you’d expect, the game has been brought into the current era featuring improved 3D graphics. However, gameplay remains quite familiar. You are tasked to build and manage your own theme park. You can now create the park of your dreams by adding new coasters, decorations and rides in order to provide your public with the best entertainment experience.
If the rumors are true, Android O will add app icon badges for active notifications – which means users will be allowed to take a quick look at the home screen and be able to see how many notifications they have for a certain app.
Moving along, we heard of a feature which sounds a lot like the “Copy Less” option we told you about a few weeks ago. The idea behind is to provide the users with “smarter text selection” options with the help of a floating toolbar with Google Assistant baked in.
Furthermore, Android O might be getting the so-called “adaptive icons” which means icons will change dynamically. This feature is currently included in the Pixel via the