Introducing Unihertz Jelly Star - The world's smallest Android 13 smartphone with a transparent design and LED light. This phone packs advanced features into a credit card-sized body, including an Octa-Core 6nm MediaTek Helio G99 processor, 8GB RAM, 256GB of storage memory, and a powerful 48MP rear ...
Go and check the link, but essentially:
small
2023 release (Android 13)
HEADPHONE JACK (I was almost sold here)
NFC
8GB RAM (that is powerful)
256 GB internal storage
Dual SIM or SIM+MicroSD
IR BLASTER (whatttttttt)
LED indicators (front AND BACK)
fingerprint scanner
face ID
FM Radio
PROGRAMMABLE BUTTON (ok I'm in love already STOPPP)
I mean... this list is mindblowing. So...
What's the downside?
Honestly, you can go and check all reviews... but this phone is virtually perfect for the size, the only issue I have is that the screen is a bit too tiny, 3 inches, and 480p, and I think this will make many people run away.
It should make me look elsewhere also... but where? Any other small phone with a bigger screen is pretty bad, old, etc... and I really needed a new phone, so I realised this was an opportunity to commit to the cause, and buy and hopefully push this form factor from Unihertz to mainstream brands.
Hopefully one day we can get one with a slightly bigger screen, I believe 4 inches and 1080p would be brutal. But for now... I think I've found my new phone. In fact, I bought it 3 hours after knowing its existance.
If you are not sold yet...
Go check reviews on YouTube (example). Honestly, you'll see every reviewer falls in love with the device, even non-small phone lovers. It looks like it performs pretty well, it's decently fast, battery is solid, screen is bright and colorful, the LEDs are really useful, even Face ID (which I'll probably disable) is quick, it does not heat up at all, and even photos are pretty decent...
And it's something like 200 $. Come on. What a deal.
And like all of these novelty phones, it has no 5G support and extremely narrow 4G band support, which means this will be nearly worthless for users in North America. And it will quickly become even more worthless as carriers are actively discontinuing their existing 3G and 4G bands.
This'll work great for most people who don't want to actually use it as a phone. I.e. it'd make a killer media playback device, remote control, or tiny PDA.
I was interested in their Titan a while ago but it, like all of their phones, has the same problem. There is no sense whatsoever in buying a new phone in 2024 that has such piddling network support.
4G is here to stay for a long while. It's fast enough for 99% of cases and 5G only covers very small areas, and will only be used (at least for now) on crowded areas where it makes sense.
Also, this device has 480p screen... I think 4G is pretty fine.
5G covers the same area as 4G on a given frequency. They're ostensibly the same technology on the air interface. The original name of 5G was "LTE2" in fact. Carriers are moving to 5G standalone where all voice, text, data are on 5G. In the US, T-Mobile has 5G on their band 71, which is 600MHz, likewise AT&T runs 5G on their 850MHz band. These bands can reach many miles away from a cell site. I regularly have seen a 5G connection to a site 8 miles away from me, for example.
The coverage will be practically the same as 4G, but slightly worse than 3G. (Which was also true for 4G.)
Carriers will likely do a slow roll over the next 5-10 years migrating 4G bands to 5G until only one or two are left on 4G for legacy devices. Not really an if, as much as a when.
Here in Germany two out of three mobile networks have almost full 5G coverage. 3G is already mostly dead. 4G will stay for a little longer but itâll be replaced by 5G entirely, as soon as the carriers deem it financially worthwhile to ditch the older tech.
I don't think 4G will get outdated in the next 5 years considering that 4G devices are still being launched today... And also considering that most people are just connected to Wi-Fi anyways...
I think we can be fine with this phone for 4/5 years and the Jelly Star 5G will probably be out there when the time comes.
The exact reason I opted not to get this phone. I kind of don't understand why so many lesser known brands have such limited bands on their phones. Does it add that much to the cost?
I can tell you that it works fine using T-Mobile. It picks up the same bands as my LG V60 (with 5g turned off). I can't speak about any other carrier, though.