vertexlit terrain

Is there any way to use the high-quality unity terrain in vertexlit mode?
At the moment, when I switch the camera to vertexlit mode, only the blurry basemap of the terrain is displayed which is not really acceptable.
Is this intended behavior ?

 

This is the intended behavior yes.

Vertex Lit will disable all pixel light dependent aspects which includes the splatmap shaders that respond to pixel lights too when they do their per pixel splat map mixing.

But nothing prevents you from using a single directional pixel light that only affects your terrain for example with all other lights being vertex lit

Also keep in mind that Tegra gpus (as they are widely used on android) don't have unified shader units. they have dedicated pixel and vertex ones with a strong focus on the pixel shader side, so using some pixel processing power can be beneficial to 'balance out the gpu usage' instead of overloading the vertex shader units which are the same (and same number) in tegra3 as in tegra2 for example.

 

I see.
Well, as long as I'm kinda forced to use forward rendering, I can at least put its capabilities to good use elsewhere.
Thanks for a quick and helpful answer!