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Jelly Star – The Smallest Android 13 Smartphone

unihertz.com

11–20 of 276 posts

Re: Jelly Star – The Smallest Android 13 Smartphone

#11
I've been using one of these for about a year. It's been great having a device that I can actually reach all of, and the small size also helps to not be a distraction.

About the only thing I miss from the Pixel series is camera skills and unnatural photo enhancements. It takes some nudging to get my jelly star to focus properly.

Re: Jelly Star – The Smallest Android 13 Smartphone

#12
post #6

Part of the problem with this brand is that this "Android 13 Smartphone" will probably stay that forever. Updates are very very minimal. I have their first jelly and it didn't even get the upgrade they promised. Other than that, it's not so bad. Swype-typing makes a small keyboard still useful. But the updates really are the achilles heel here.

This is not as big a problem as you make it out to be due to the availability of alternative Android distributions. A quick search shows that LineageOS 20 already runs well on this device which means it should be possible to keep it up to date for a long time. I'm using a Samsung SIIIneo from 2014 with LineageOS 18.1 (Android 11) for which LineageOS 20 is available as well while Samsung dropped support at Android 4.4. Since I prefer the 'clean Android' experience over whatever vendor embellishments have been added I tend to switch to LineageOS as soon as I get a new (or "new") device anyway. I'm using LineageOS as an example but there are plenty of alternative AOSP-derived distributions for those who want something else.

What I'd actually like to see is an updated Motorola Defy [1], a waterproof/shockproof device with a 3.7" screen, a user-changeable battery, headphone jack, a good loud speaker, uSD card slot, etc. Just give it enough battery capacity to last for a week with mild use like the Defy+ offered, enough memory and storage to last for 10 years of Android development and make sure the bootloader can be unlocked by the user. That is one device I'd buy as a 'working' phone (i.e. a device which can withstand the rigours of farm life), what I use that Samsung SIIIneo for now. It already survived three falls from a 8.5m high barn roof while I was installing solar panels, my daughter's Defy+ survived going through a full wash/spin cycle when she left it in her trouser pocket. That is what I want from a phone, not some silly 'AI' gimmicks.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Defy

Re: Jelly Star – The Smallest Android 13 Smartphone

#13
Looks like there might have been some creative recycling of very old tooling to make this, the design language is reminicisient of Android phones from a decade ago. Especially the presence of dedicated navigation buttons, which were phased out starting from Android 4.0.

Re: Jelly Star – The Smallest Android 13 Smartphone

#15

I've been using one of these for about a year. It's been great having a device that I can actually reach all of, and the small size also helps to not be a distraction. About the only thing I miss from the Pixel series is camera skills and unnatural photo enhancements. It takes some nudging to get my jelly star to focus properly.

Then you could even buy a separate digital camera…

Re: Jelly Star – The Smallest Android 13 Smartphone

#16
post #8

Jelly Star is really small, I doubt it's usual as an actual smartphone (but I understand the "under-smartphone" usage). For the people who want the just-big-enough-to-be-usable-one-handed (for average man hands let's say), the upcoming Jelly Max should fit better. My current daily driver which fits that just-big-enough is Qin 3 Ultra. Its size is perfect, but it is no longer available (unless you want to use their or…

>the upcoming Jelly Max

From a quick search it looks like it's gonna have a 5" screen and be 15mm thick.

Re: Jelly Star – The Smallest Android 13 Smartphone

#19
post #6

Part of the problem with this brand is that this "Android 13 Smartphone" will probably stay that forever. Updates are very very minimal. I have their first jelly and it didn't even get the upgrade they promised. Other than that, it's not so bad. Swype-typing makes a small keyboard still useful. But the updates really are the achilles heel here.

This is not as big a problem as you make it out to be due to the availability of alternative Android distributions. A quick search shows that LineageOS 20 already runs well on this device which means it should be possible to keep it up to date for a long time. I'm using a Samsung SIIIneo from 2014 with LineageOS 18.1 (Android 11) for which LineageOS 20 is available as well while Samsung dropped support at Android 4.4…

I used LineageOS on a number of devices for a number of years, and had to upgrade to a new device every year due to either performance, bugs, or official support being dropped. Can't tell you the number of various bugs I ran into that completely made it unusable, until the point I just started getting two of every device to be able to have a backup, and be able to do clean version updates.

Being able to just get one device and use it for 5+ years is such a relief, and gives me a lot less to worry about day to day. Custom roms are best left to tinkerers who are okay with their device randomly breaking with no rhyme or reason, and spending hours either trying to fix it or reflash/restore to stock and set everything back up again.

Re: Jelly Star – The Smallest Android 13 Smartphone

#20
post #3

I've been using this phone as my full time phone for 1 year. It's a great compromise for people that ideally would not want a smartphone, but need to have one since many life situations require it. I basically only use it for WhatsApp and music, but when some other need arises, it can do everything a normal smartphone can do. The only problem is that the build quality is not good. The audio jack of the first one I bo…

Interesting. The headphone jack would be my main reason for buying this thing. Recently forgot my iPad on a trip, and couldn't listen to anything on the plane because my goddamned iPhone lacks a headphone jack. So offensively stupid.

Why not just get a 3.5mm to lightning adaptor? They have knock-off/generic versions at gas stations that cost like 5 dollars and it beats lugging around a whole extra device just to use your headphones
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