Arnt Gulbrandsen
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Jelly 2

The Unihertz Jelly was small and fine, and I did like it but I had to give it up. The battery wasn't good enough for my use when travelling, and now that my eyes are fifty years old I admit I found the screen too small.

At the time I wrote that a smartphone should be small and light, have a large screen and battery, be fast enough, and not have too many bugs. Obviously there's a conflict between overall size and screen/­battery size. Now that Unihertz has shipped a slightly larger Jelly 2 I decided to buy one to try (after worrying for a while about whether the screen was a large enough part of the phone's front). I've used it for a while now.

The phone isn't elegant, chic, stylish or pretty. I want it to stay in my pocket, out of sight, so logically speaking I shouldn't mind its looks. I really shouldn't. On the other hand, it's well-built and feels solid. It lies well in the hand.

There's a visible Torx screw (that does nothing?).

The apps I want to run work, even though they clearly are designed for bigger screens. The battery and screen are OK. A very small screen is a very small strain on the battery, but the screen is big enough for my eyes and I can enter text.

Like its predecessor, the Jelly 2 is not fun. That's a good thing in my opinion. This phone can be used to call, it can speak in my ear and tell me to turn right at the next intersection, it can be used for 2FA and my other apps, and it isn't a timewaste magnet. Browsing Instagram, Twitter and so on is possible, but that kind of thing isn't attractive on this phone's display. This is perhaps one reason that I don't worry about the battery. I charge it I notice it's low and don't worry. If I charge it in the morning, I always have >50% battery left in the evening.

It fits in every pocket I have, even in my tightest jeans, it runs the apps I need, and if it makes me spend less time on Twitter, that's fine.

Jelly Pro, Android 8.1

Many more months have passed, the Jelly Pro is still in my life, and it now runs Android 8.1.

Android 8.1 runs well, but one configuration setting absolutely must be changed: settings → smart assistant → power save manager and then turn that off. The power saving regime provided by Android 8 is better, and the third-party power save manager Unihertz has included confuses […More…]

More on the Jelly Pro smartphone

Another few weeks have passed.

I have made up my mind to ditch the Jelly and go back to a bigger phone, in fact I've made up my mind to that several times. And I've also made up my mind that I cannot possibly do that.

It's difficult. One one hand many things work so well on the Jelly. I have apps, for example Google Authenticator, on a device that is unobtrusively small and is not a timewaste magnet. On the other, data entry can be a pain. Last Satuday I wanted to know whether I had time to get to a shop before it closed, and I remembered the shop's location but not its name. I found it, which makes the Jelly qualitatively different from other small phones, but the data entry was impractical compared to a large smartphone.

The tiny Jelly Pro smartphone

I don't buy a lot of hardware any more, and nothing out of the ordinary... but I have a credit-card-sized smartphone called Jelly (a Jelly Pro actually, with 2GB RAM).

A smartphone should be small and light, have a large screen and battery, be fast enough, and not have too many bugs. Obviously there's a conflict between overall size and screen/battery size. The Jelly is a very different compromise than most smartphones — most phones fit barely in a pocket, or only in some pockets, and provide large screens on which apps work well. The Jelly starts by fitting easily in any pocket, and makes the apps work as well as possible on a very small screen.

It succeeds on size: I can stick the Jelly in tight jeans pockets and sit down without noticing that it's there. […More…]