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Jelly Star – The Smallest Android 13 Smartphone

unihertz.com

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Re: Jelly Star – The Smallest Android 13 Smartphone

#41
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You got unlucky with your devices (having unfortunate hardware compatibility) or the ROM maintainers (being inexperienced or just not good). LOS is really great and rarely has any issues coming from the pure source of the OS.

My experience mirrors yours. I have it on two tablets and they're the most stable and lightweight in terms of a software experience of anything I've ever used.

Re: Jelly Star – The Smallest Android 13 Smartphone

#42

This is cool as an option. But, why oh why mustn't we have any 5 inch Android phone on the market? It's not as if there's no demand, as evidenced by iPhone SE on the iOS side. The last real Android choice was the Pixel 4a and beyond that, everything has been mega huge.

Comment further down the thread mentioned the upcoming Jelly Star Max. Looks like it is exactly what you look for.

https://www.unihertz.com/pages/new?utm_source=twitter&utm_me...

Re: Jelly Star – The Smallest Android 13 Smartphone

#43
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…

I can only imagine that the typing experience on such a tiny phone is sub optimal. When you say WhatsApp are you actually typing in messages ?

I am, but I only type the messages I need to type. Which aren't that many. If there's some long explanation to be had I call or I leave a voice message. And yes, I am aware of the fact that everybody hates voice messages, but it's only fair if somebody requires my immediate attention :).

Typing is painful, but not disastrous actually. It's perfectly serviceable.

Re: Jelly Star – The Smallest Android 13 Smartphone

#44
post #29

I'm curious if people actually use the IR in place of their TV remote as in the promo. For me personally, I think the friction of having to fire up an app first would preclude me from ever using it in earnest.

It’s pretty easy to launch the remote function on my iPhone to control my Apple TV. I still almost never do it. The loss of the tactile ability to find the buttons, especially without looking, kills it unless you’re in a real bind.

The only time I ever use mine, is when the dreaded linear type entry comes up.

Re: Jelly Star – The Smallest Android 13 Smartphone

#45
post #38

This is cool as an option. But, why oh why mustn't we have any 5 inch Android phone on the market? It's not as if there's no demand, as evidenced by iPhone SE on the iOS side. The last real Android choice was the Pixel 4a and beyond that, everything has been mega huge.

Even on the Apple side there doesn't seem to be that much demand, as demonstrated by the fact that the SEs are just iterations on old iPhone tooling (currently the iPhone 8) rather than brand new compact designs, and the size of the SE has crept upwards as they moved it to newer tooling. I think the motive behind the SE has more to do with cost optimization than size, it just happens that the cheapest way to make an…

Also, the iPhone minis did not really fly, apparently.

Re: Jelly Star – The Smallest Android 13 Smartphone

#46
post #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.

Here tho official announcement:

https://www.unihertz.com/pages/new?utm_source=twitter&utm_me...

Re: Jelly Star – The Smallest Android 13 Smartphone

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

i end up using an adapter (because samsung also arm-twisted me into doing that), but they are typically terrible quality/break, catch on to things, i need to always remember to pack one, and still keep forgetting/losing them. Our overlords at Apple (Samsung promptly followed) decided that we must all switch to airpods, but instead just made it a huge pain for people. Also strange for Samsung whose phones are gigantic, it's not like they don't have enough room.

Re: Jelly Star – The Smallest Android 13 Smartphone

#49
post #28

Would rather wait for the Tiq Mini M5 to be back in stock. [0] as the small Android device you should be waiting for. [0] https://www.tiqphone.com/

That looks like a significantly different type of device.

I'd be okay with a small screen as a compromise for making the device smaller—I like small things—but I really don't want buttons taking up half the space.

Re: Jelly Star – The Smallest Android 13 Smartphone

#50
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…

If you use apps that require security (like payment apps) you might run into problems here. My company might need to exclude phones like this one soon because more and more CVEs are coming up. Alternative ROMs are often not the solution here because Play Integrity and Key Attestation no longer work.

For general messaging and browsing this hardware likely work quite well.

Btw I had the Motorola Defy and flashed it every month with a new ROM back in the days :D

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