It’s great. I keep it in my fanny pack.
Edit: it’s a uniherz jelly star (green)
Ok, but all these package for a tiny phone?
OHHH YEAHHHH You’re in for a treat!! I didn’t think I’d love this thing THIS much!!
reminds me of the S3 mini
Tiny phones are fun. Plan to make this a dedicated MP3 player
Normal response i get, “it looks like the baby alarm we use to have” , I i can’t lie it really looks like a popular model here in Scandinavia
I fuckin LOVE the Jelly Star! I use it as my music player. Expandable memory, headphone jack, runs BlackPlayer and Podcast Addict. Don’t need it to do anything else in the world. Wonderful device.
Just needs a magnetic ink display and it’d be perfect.
Don’t be fooled, that’s actually a galaxy s25 ultra. It’s just that this guy has massive hands.
Please tell me how you like it. I used to have the palm which is a bit smaller. I loved it though it lacked in battery and was occasionally expectedly slow. I’ve since smashed 2 to bits and the cases weren’t super available then and I didn’t have a printer to make one yet. I used it mostly for travel but I’m considering switching to something like this for a daily driver.
This battery lasts longer than I thought when I purchased, and it’s much more powerful than it has any right to be, being this small. All in all, I love it. It’s perfect for my needs. I’ve had “cooler” phones that were “nicer” to use when I used phones a lot, but this is absolutely the perfect phone for me now. It can do everything a full size phone can do functionally, but it’s tiny, out of the way, and it looks cool. Very utilitarian. Great for people who don’t use phones as much as the average person, or is very conscious about how much stuff they have in their pockets.
I love mine. It fits comfortably in my bra, unlike my previous phone. Some games are too small, especially text-heavy ones that don’t scale the text. That’s ok. I shouldn’t play so many phone games anyway.
Favorite comment from a coworker: [exasperated] “Could you find a smaller phone‽”
“I would if I could!”
Actual answer: “no, I tried!”
But how long does the battery last?
Actually quite a long time. It comes with an aggressive battery saving mode that kills things in the background, but it’s incredibly configurable. More so than possibly any phone’s battery management system I’ve used. I don’t have it set very aggressively because I like things like immich to auto-upload photos to my home server, and other things like that, I keep bluetooth on all the time for my smart watch, and even then the battery can last for 2 days straight, especially if the generic android “battery saver” mode is enabled.
I think it comes down to the tiny screen not using much power haha.
If unihertz supported a viable AOSP alternative they would be the perfect smartphones - the hardware seems fantastic. In fact, if they ever do open up to something like Graphene I might just buy one from each of their lines.
They’re rootable (flashable) from what I’ve read, would just take someone wanting to compile Lineage for it.
At least since it’s bootloader unlockable, you can root it and disable what you want, though as I understand they ship with a pretty vanilla OS.
Yea, not the same as Lineage, but far better than most.
This you, OP:
???
Hahahahaha
How the turns have tabled!
pretty neat phone, really love the idea, but im kind of afraid to order things through aliexpress. not sure hows the return policy, and if they provide repairs and guarantee. im also afraid that i’d find some dealbreaker, and would have to keep a “normal” phone with me too
i saw it has nfc. does the super strict banking apps work on it? like for ex.: revolut and other bigger banks apps
No need to use aliexpress, you can order directly from their site, and through dumwireless (which has an exclusive green version):
https://www.unihertz.com/products/jelly-star
https://dumbwireless.com/products/jelly-star
Edit: also yes it works with chase, capital one, google pay, and those are the only ones I’ve tried so far. I’ve paid via NFC with it as well.
Not sure the return policy with those two, but it’s like $200, one of the cheapest phones I’ve ever owned. Might make it worth the risk for some people. The risk turned out to be a win for me, at least.
Thanks for the reply. Turned out I clicked the “Russia/Switzerland/Norway/Others” instead of the “EU” button, so I wasn’t very prudent. Since years I was searching for a small phone, that is usable for everyday tasks. This one is by far the closest I found, I think I’ll give it a try. Thanks for the post and bringing the phone to my attention
You can’t fool me with your giant hands!
A phone with a full sized HDMI connector? Neat!
I thought Andre the Giant passed away decades ago…
I’ve had mine since they shipped out the Kickstarter orders (two years). Thing is an amazing piece of engineering. Even has unusual extras like call recording, IR blaster, headphone jack, & an FM radio. About the only thing missing is 5G radio support (unless you care about wireless charging, but it charges so fast that it’s no big deal), although I wish the battery were user-replaceable. At least the AccuBattery app estimates I got one with a capacity roughly 20% over spec.
The next model they came out with would have been the one I’d have waited to get had I known they were working on it, though. The Tank Mini has basically the same specs, but also with a more usable 4.3" screen size, a second programmable function button, roughly 2.75x the battery capacity, a powerful flashlight/emergency warning light (used to also have a laser rangefinder, but they seem to have eliminated that). The battery longevity & extra programmable button would have been good to have.
ETA:
AccuBattery has helped me keep the battery in decent shape even after two years. Basically, the lithium-ion batteries prevalent in phones today will last several more years if you keep them charged in the middle third range (33-66%) as much as possible - doesn’t have to be every time, but the more you do it the more it helps. I’m typing this on my OnePlus 7 Pro that I bought used five years ago - it arrived with 89% of stock capacity, and just dropped below 80% a few months ago because I’ve been doing this. This model is over six years old, and still has decent life left in it (and I virtually never use the selfie cam, but its pop-up one is extremely cool & doesn’t eat a hole in my screen).But the Jelly Star does fit perfectly in the palm of my hand - even with my slightly smaller than average sized hands. It’s fantastic for subtle usage and easy to pocket. The feature list for something so small is unreal even two years later.
I like the tank in theory but the translucent green plastic is like a sirens call to me.
I’m more of a function over form type, so I keep a case on it & don’t even use the glyph lights on the back. Just more proof that it’s great for a variety of use cases.
The tank looks like what I wanted last time I bought a phone. Only seems to be missing eSIM, but that’s not a deal breaker.
I look at eSIMs much like i do physical copies of games: all electronic is more convenient, sure - but I don’t trust the carriers not to make freely transferring them between devices more difficult again once they have the vast majority of users dependent upon them. I’d rather have a physical SIM I can move freely between devices without allowing them the possibility of blocking it via software control.
Having both options is ideal. I see eSIM as more disposable, such as when travelling.
