Spanish company BQ has launched two new Android smartphones today, both of which are already available from its international online store. The Aquaris VS and Aquaris VS Plus share a lot of specs, as you'd expect from the naming convention, and yes, the Plus model is bigger.
The BQ Aquaris VS has a 5.2-inch 720p IPS touchscreen with 2.5D glass and up to 520 nits of brightness, a 12 MP main camera with f/2.0 aperture and 1.25µm pixels, as well as 1080p video recording. For selfies you have an 8 MP sensor with f/2.0 aperture and 1.12µm pixels, and even a LED flash.
The phone is powered by the Snapdragon 430 chipset, which has a 1.4 GHz octa-core Cortex-A53 CPU. You get either 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage for €189.90, or a 4/64GB combo for €209.90. A fingerprint scanner is on the back, and the Aquaris VS has a 3,100 mAh battery with support for Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0. It runs Android 7.1.2 Nougat with an update to Oreo promised for the future.
The Aquaris VS Plus only has one version, with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. It boasts a 5.5-inch 1080p IPS LCD with 2.5D glass and up to 570 nits of brightness. It has a 3,400 mAh battery, while all the other specs are identical to what its smaller sibling brings to the table. This model retails for €229.90.
While the BQ online store delivers to a lot of countries, do note that these phones have very limited LTE band support - just 1/3/7/20. That's all you need for Europe, but if you're anywhere else in the world you'd better check if your carrier's bands are fully supported before you order and pay the shipping fee, which for some countries is more than a 20% premium over the price of the handset.
