The Kickstarter smartphone Jelly (Pro) by Unihertz is smaller than two matchboxes and should still offer much that the hearts of Android fans desire. What is the Jelly (Pro) in everyday life? Via Kickstarter, some unusual projects have already been realized. The Unihertz Jelly (Pro) adds another. The smartphone is barely the size of two matchboxes. Nevertheless, it offers LTE, dual-SIM, microSD slot, GPS and an almost pure preinstalled Android 7.0 version a wide range of functions that not every budget smartphone can have.
Quickly you should ask yourself the question: Who needs such a thing? Well – Unihertz does not see the Jelly Pro as a replacement for your smartphone. The 2.45-inch device is designed as an emergency phone and should be used wherever your regular smartphone is too bulky, but you do not want to be able to do without the possibility of “making phone calls”. Some examples:
.Jelly Pro can replace your GPS watch or smartwatch while jogging. It’s small enough to disappear in the pocket of a pair of running pants, thanks to the GPS module, you can track your workout data and stream music to your headphones via Bluetooth. Should you accidentally fall over alone in the forest alone, you can also call on the Jelly Pro help other than with your watch.
.If you do not want to buy a “real” smartphone for your child but are also not a friend of children’s smartwatches, you will find a similarly compact alternative in Jelly Pro. With the appropriate apps can adjust the functionality of a Kids watch.
The Jelly Pro probably tells you nothing at all. The company Unihertz unveiled the world’s smallest smartphone in early 2017. We received a Review Unit of this smartphone, to say the least original. Simple gadget? Real utility? We tell you everything in our Jelly Pro Review at IGeekPhone. Big thanks to Unihertz for providing this Jelly Pro Review unit
Who is Unihertz?
Unihertz is the mind behind the world’s smallest 4G smartphone. They are based in Shanghai, China and they first came to the scene on Kickstarter. With a team of passionate designers and engineers who believe in the advancement of technology, they set out to design and create unique mobile products for modern explorers. They launched their Kickstarter campaign earlier this year with the aim of raising $30,000 to bring the Jelly Pro phone to life. However, they smashed, when we say smashed, they raised $1.25 million on their Kickstarter campaign and people are loving the Jelly Pro phones globally! Jelly Pro is now available on Amazon US and Amazon UK/DE/FR/ IT/ES.
Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, Amazon FR, Amazon IT, Amazon ES
Specification
Unboxing
The Jelly Pro will be delivered to you in a White cardboard box and with the logo in Grey, which is very simple. Back to Jelly Pro, the box looks also simple and on the back, there are the main specifications. Inside this box we will find the following products:
- 1 x Jelly Pro Smartphone
- 1 x Power Adapter
- 1 x MicroUSB Cable
- 1 x Tiny Screen Protector
- 1 x User Manual
Design
When we unpacked the jelly, the word “cute” inevitably came to mind. The device is tiny at 92.3mm long, 43mm wide, and 13.3mm thick (3.6 x 1.7 x 0.5 inches) but not exactly thin. People who do not know the Jelly Pro would most likely consider it a toy phone. But the product once taken in the hand by no means pulled out of the gumball machine. Although the Jelly Pro is made entirely of plastic, the case makes a solid impression. There is no creaking, no uneven gap dimensions and the battery cover is stuck.
This amazing smartphone has the shape of a small pebble. A shiny plastic pebble that takes us back in time. Back to the 90s, at the time of reduced-size mobile phones like the Nokia 8210 for example. In 2017, we saw sexier. The only difference, the Jelly Pro is an Android smartphone. Its screen is tactile, even if it is tiny. As for the processing of the device, we feel in times of Samsung’s Galaxy S set back: a lot of plastic, which feels a bit cheap compared to today’s polycarbonate devices. We can not detect metal on the case of the Jelly Pro. Basically, the processing is good, the smartphone does not creak and has not too large gaps.
Everything is extremely compact and does not breathe quality. It feels like using a phone from the 90s with built-in Android. The small size is comfortable to grip, but its weight makes us quickly forget his presence in the pocket. We regularly wonder if we did not lose it. So we saw more practical, more beautiful. Being small is not enough to be cute.
It has a 2MP front-facing camera at the top along with earpiece. There are three capacitive touch buttons below the display, one of them is a circular home button. All these buttons offer haptic feedback, Beneath the screen is the round home button – including a circular notification LED – installed.
The phone has curved edges on all the sides. This phone will be easy to handle especially for people with small hands like my Younger Brother. One hand operations are super easy on this phone. Especially at a time when most users struggle to reach the top of the phone with their thumbs.
On the left side of the phone are two buttons that are responsible for the volume control. Finally, the on/off POWER switch is on the right side, while the 3.5mm headphone jack is present on the top. A metal rim goes around the phone.
There is an 8MP camera with LED flash at the back. Unihertz branding and loudspeaker grill is present at the bottom. The speaker is not great but it does a good job for you.
The phone has a removable back cover and a removable battery. Below the removable battery, there are two Dual nano SIM slots and micro SD card slot for expandable storage up to 256GB.
Display
The display measures 2.45 inches diagonally – less than the monitor of a modern digital camera such as the Panasonic GH5. The resolution is 432 x 240 pixels, which is also quite small considering the required display size: The pixel density is only 201 PPi, which you can also see in the screen contents. The presentation is not really sharp, staircase effects, especially in writing, can be recognized. Looking at the screen from the side, it noticeably loses brightness. This is especially true when we look at it from a lower angle.
The display glass does not look very scratch-resistant on us. Thankfully, Unihertz adds a screen protector to the Jelly Pro, which is easy to apply without bubbles thanks to the small size of the display. Below the display is the home button and left a back button and right – unusual in modern smartphones – a menu button. This calls within an app, the menu, and not – as with most current devices – the overview of recently used apps. We reach this via a long press on the home button, which also serves as a notification light.
Hardware and Performance
The consistency of the product is even more incomprehensible that the performance of this Jelly Pro is pretty good. With its MediaTek’s MT6737M quad-core processor running at 1.09 GHz and 2 GB of RAM, the Jelly Pro is fast and fluid to use. To check emails, messages or social networks, the smartphone is very effective. this is enough for the Jelly Pro model to be able to flip through the home screen smoothly; when launching apps and their use, the limitations of the system but quickly. The standard version of the Jelly has a built-in flash memory of 8 GB, which in our opinion is not enough. Almost half are available for users to use, which is why we need to keep house without a memory card.
We thought he would flirt on Facebook for example, very resource-intensive, but he showed up. This is mainly due to the preinstalled DuraSpeed feature. It closes applications running in the background and optimizes performance. It also speeds up the launch of these apps. It is possible to disable this function. The smartphone is always very fluid, it is only a little longer to launch the apps. Whether connected to 4G or WiFi, the Jelly Pro is fluid. We did not notice any hitch in our daily use. The 16 GB of internal memory is moreover sufficient on such a smartphone (it is possible to extend the memory up to 256 GB via an SD card). You can take a photo packet before filling the internal memory.
Obviously, is it useful to specify that to play, the Jelly Pro does not do the trick? First because of its screen too small, then because it lacks the power to support the most graphic games greedy.
In the benchmarks, the Jelly Pro scores as expected: This processor obtains acceptable results in the benchmark tests, but for casual users, it will be more than enough. AnTuTu scores 23,385 points in 6.xxx Version and 31,539 Points in 7.xxx Version, while Geekbench rates the performance of a single core in 473 and multi-core in 1341. Simpler games like Angry Birds run without any problems on the smartphone, and after a while, this works well on the small screen; However, challenging applications are not suitable for the Jelly Pro, the smartphone then noticeably starts to jerk. Full HD movies can be played smoothly on the Jelly Pro.
Jelly Pro OS
The Jelly Pro is delivered with Android version 7.0. When and if there will be an update to Android 8.0 aka Oreo, is not known. The manufacturer says that there should be updates in the future. Currently, we have the security patch from July 2017 installed. Unihertz has hardly made any changes to the user interface. Only the on-screen keyboard was perfectly optimized for the small display size. We would not have dreamed before the test that it is so fast and easy on the Jelly (Pro) taps. Only rarely we had to correct our input in the test. Alternatively, you can use Google’s voice control – for example, if you’re looking for an app on Google Play. It is nice that there is hardly any bloatware on the device. Unihertz has just added some handy apps.
Unihertz has pleasingly little changed on the standard interface of Android 7.0 Nougat. That was a good decision, because, with an elaborate home screen, the performance would certainly have gone to its knees. The mobile phone was also not garbed with apps, the 16 GB of memory has about 10 GB left at the factory. The phone has pre-installed apps like Gmail, Chrome, and Maps. Surprisingly the YouTube app is not present. Other apps include Pedometer, FM Radio, Flashlight and Sound Recorder. There are separate apps for Music and Gallery.
Camera
There are entry-level smartphones, in which begins the evaluation after the motive hunt the big guesswork. The photos of the Jelly Pro camera you will find no Pixelmator. The main camera delivers amazingly good pictures. The focus is quite sluggish, but if the recording is then in the box, convincing the results for the most part. The 8-megapixel optics with aperture f / 2.4 is a “good weather camera”. If the lighting conditions are right, hobby photographers will find natural colors and distinctive details. Only the sharpness falling to the edges and the somewhat aggressive post-processing of the software are noticeable. Click for the whole picture …
For occasional snapshots, the Jelly Pro is good, but what about the selfies? Not very well. The results are more like watercolor drawings and only a few details are captured. Due to the lack of autofocus, the focus is also a matter of luck. For sharing via the mobile phone messenger, the front camera may be sufficient for emergencies, but high-quality self-portraits are not possible.
Connectivity
The phone has dual SIM card slots. Both the SIMs support 4G, but you can enable 4G only in one SIM at a time, while the other goes to 2G. Other connectivity options include Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth 4.0. The call quality is clear on the Jelly Pro. The LTE modem is designed according to category 4, which means for the user a maximum of 150 Mbit / s in the download and 50 Mbit / s in the upload. The Wi-Fi module, in turn, offers dual-band (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz) and has been implemented with the 802.11n standard. Other communication options are VoLTE, Bluetooth 4.1 and GPS. An FM radio provides the music.
Battery
A 950 mAh battery leaves you in doubt if the Jelly Pro can survive the day with a charge. In this regard, we can give the all-clear. Due to the small display, the low resolution and the less demanding processor, the power consumption of the tiny keeps within limits. We reached a standby time of 18.5 hours. During that time, the phone’s screen was lit for almost two hours at 90 percent brightness. We used various apps, the camera, the internet and YouTube for video streaming. If the phone is less demanding, there are certainly two to three days standby in there.
Conclusion
At first, you might smile at the sight of this petite mobile phone, but after about a week of everyday use, we are mainly pleased – both from the phone itself, as well as the underlying concept. The Unihertz Jelly Pro is suitable for people who are looking for a compact and with 62 grams very light second smartphone. But even as the main device for users with smaller hands and children, the phone can be considered. In any case, if communication is the most important thing to you, that is, making calls, texting, and messenger like WhatsApp. Websites are only reasonable to use in the mobile view, photos and videos are easy to call, but they do not show up so well on the small screen.
Despite the small display and the moderate hardware, Android 7.0 runs very smoothly on the Unihertz Jelly Pro. The uses for the mini-smartphone are limited. You can buy From Amazon at $124.99. Jelly Pro is now available on Amazon US and Amazon UK/DE/FR/ IT/ES.