
Jelly 2, World's Smallest Android 10 4G Smartphone - seveneightn9ne
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jellyphone/jelly-2-worlds-smallest-android-10-4g-smartphone
======
Dunedan
The volume of the Unihertz Jelly 2 (77.4cm³) is more than 13% larger than the
volume of an Apple iPhone SE (2020) (68cm³)!

I consider that to be a good reminder that there is no free lunch: If you
build such a small smartphone, you suddenly don't have enough space behind the
screen for a flat battery anymore, forcing you to increase the depth of the
device to fit an adequate battery. You then end up with a device with a
similar volume as one with a larger screen.

~~~
em-bee
it still makes a difference, i struggle to use my current phone one-handed.
reaching the other edge with my thumb is always a pain. i welcome a smaller
but thicker phone.

~~~
nomel
I get hate every time I demonstrate mine, especially from males, but something
like a pop socket really makes handling a phone a much nicer experience.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
How do you not snap the phone with one of those on it?

~~~
nomel
I don't understand the question. The pop socket doesn't apply any force. I
suppose if you sit on the phone it could bend easier. I do not do this.

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panpanna
If Sony ever brings back Xperia Mini I will be a happy man.

I don't want the best camera or the fastest cpu. Can live with a tiny display.
Just give me something that can run Android 10 reasonably well in a tiny
package and you have my money.

~~~
jbay808
Do you mean the Xperia Compact, or did they have a separate Mini line too?

I love Sony's phones, but their product naming confuses me to no end...

~~~
panpanna
I 100% agree with you. Their latest flagship is named "1 II" (that's Xperia
one, mark two. Someone should be fired for this).

Anyway, I was thinking of the original mini line not the later compact line.
The first mini, "x10 mini", was too small to run the standard Android launcher
so I would prefer the newer slightly larger "mini":

[https://www.phonearena.com/phones/size/Apple-iPhone-
SE-2020,...](https://www.phonearena.com/phones/size/Apple-iPhone-SE-2020,Sony-
Ericsson-Xperia-mini/phones/10750,5505)

------
frabbit
I missed this which irritates me: I have the first Jelly and would definitely
like a larger battery and better GPS. May still order one later anyway.

I love the size and convenience. I find the keyboard surprisingly good for
such a small screen. For my purposes: occasional call, signal message,
GPS/GoogleMaps it is perfect.

------
nailer
Great! This seems to compete with the new palm.com phones, but the palm ones
have poor battery life (palm do look nicer though).

I'd be happy to drop money for a phone this size provided it can last all day.
The whole point of a small phone is not to think about it - including having
to charge it halfway through your day.

~~~
sradman
Recent HN thread _Palm – The best small phone for minimalists, athletes, and
kids_ [1]. The phone was released in late 2018 by a Chinese manufacturer known
for releasing malware [2] in the past:

> The app, named "Weather Forecast-World Weather Accurate Radar," was
> developed by TCL Corporation, a Chinese electronics company that among other
> things owns the Alcatel, BlackBerry, and Palm brands.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23659871](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23659871)

[2] [https://www.zdnet.com/article/malware-found-preinstalled-
on-...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/malware-found-preinstalled-on-some-
alcatel-smartphones/)

------
dencodev
I was eager to buy this and even had the kickstarter on my calendar and
checked it first thing this morning after waking up (PST). Unfortunately $129
was really the limit of what I was willing to pay and they're out of that tier
of pricing. I cannot imagine this retailing at $200 and doing well. I guess
I'll pickup a used one in a year when someone gets bored with it.

I have the first one and it's great for the gym or running. However removing
the rear backing and battery to swap my phone's sim card into is a pain (so
that I don't have to pay for two phone plans when I only use this one a few
hours a week), as is the micro USB charging and the lack of fingerprint reader
and the smaller battery.

~~~
frabbit
Agreed on the SIM swapping being irritating. It would be nice if it were in
some sort of caddy. I also have a spare battery and find it irritating to swap
it out.

------
axegon_
A phone like this would be absolutely perfect in my world. Not as a daily
phone or a phone at all but rather a bicycle computer with extended features.
Shoving a 5-6-7 inch screen on the handlebar is borderline impossible and and
anything but optimal. But something like this could be perfect: exercise
tracking, music player, with some additional work you could hook it up to a
camera mounted under the seat and have a mirror, which I find extremely
useful. Ideally one or two buttons mounted somewhere around the shifters to
easily switch between some pre-defined modes(tracking, camera, map, weather,
etc.) and it could be absolutely perfect.

~~~
brutt
Which extended features you need to have on the bicycle computer, for example?
I'm already overwhelmed with features my bicomp has. (I use SC Dash M50,
because I like it small pebble like size).

~~~
axegon_
Generally what I said above: map, strava, camera mounted under the seat as a
mirror(all mirrors I've seen take a lot of space on the handlebars), music
player, notifications, calls and whatnot. I don't ride a bike every
day(usually it's twice a week) but my rides are in the 60-80km range so having
the basics in front of me would be absolutely perfect. At the moment every
time I want to check a notification or pause strava or change my playlist, I
have to pull over, take my phone out of my backpack, do my thing, put the
phone back in and then continue riding. It's not a big deal by any means but
it is annoying when you have to stop once every hour or so.

~~~
brutt
Map - I have map on my bicomp.

Strava - I can upload my route to Strava from phone connected by BLE.

Mirror - yeah, it will be nice to have. Currently, I use my ears for tracking
cars behind me, which saved me lot of times. I had moped mirror mounted on
handlebars for about month: it was good, but I broke it very fast. Also, I had
tiny mirror on pole/stick?(non native speaker) manually soldered to left side
of my glasses with metal frame: it worked good, but I look dumb when I wear
them, and they were hard to store, so mirror was scratched and damaged in few
days. I plan to make new version, using flex leg from another glasses with
metal frame, so I will be able to fold mirror.

Music player - I use cheap Chinese open-ear headphones(Atlanfa, cannot find
them online) with built-in player and FM radio. I use them almost every day.
They are open ear, so I hear road very well, especially with reduced volume.
They work for about 2h with FM radio on, which is enough for me.

Notifications - my bicomp can display notifications and call info from phone
attached by BLE, and my headphones are alerting me too about notifications and
allows me to respond to calls. However, I have problem on my bicomp (Dash M50)
with notifications with emoj: they are truncated after first emoj. Sometimes,
emoj is the first letter in the text. :-(

I ride for about 25km daily to/from work in hilly area.

------
Yetanfou
It looks like a downsized version of the Motorola Defy which I'm still using
on and off. It has the same screen resolution on a smaller screen (the Defy
has a 3.7" screen). The selling point for the Defy was the fact that is was
waterproof and relatively sturdy (which is proven by the fact that I haven't
managed to break it in 9 years of rough use), I'm still waiting for a similar
but more up to date device to appear. There is no information on whether this
device is waterproof, this question is asked in the FAQ but not answered.

------
jaredandrews
Anyone here ever get one of their older devices?

~~~
ruffrey
I had the original Jelly. Had high hopes of getting a small modern phone, with
minimal features but no time wasting apps, but returned it.

Battery life was hours. It wasn’t safe to take to work because it’d be dead in
an hour of listening to music on the commute.

Phone call quality was so poor my family and coworkers went mutiny. I could
hear them fine but the mic was awful, apparently.

The screen was so, so small that it took a long time to type, and was fraught
with mistakes. I realized there is such a thing as too small.

Every picture taken was uselessly blurry.

Overall it felt like the early 2000s.

I would greatly be willing to try again. I need to upgrade this iPhone SE.
Call me crazy, but having a phone that fits in my pocket, no matter what I’m
wearing - that’s the best feature a phone could have.

~~~
FreakyT
You might be in luck later this year — rumor is that the smallest model of
“iPhone 12” will be almost the same case size as the classic SE.

~~~
RandomBacon
Rumor is that Apple starts fake rumors so they can always surprise everyone.
Actually, that rumor is completely made up just like every other rumor.

------
j88439h84
The kickstarter funding target is $50k. Is that a typical cost to design and
manufacture a phone?

~~~
ozten
A good budget for having a folding table at Mobile World Congress and giving
out Jelly 2 branded socks.

------
waheoo
Can you make one that's just not RSI inducingly large? I don't need "oh it's
so cute" at parties, I need, "that looks almost usable."

I'm so close to just buying a second hand Nexus 5, i'm so over all these
phablets.

------
gillesjacobs
Seems great for the prison phone market! Even though it is on the larger side
and will be quite uncomfortable to fit. There is are while (mostly Chinese)
lines of phones made for smuggling [1]. Seems like a stretch that it has a lot
of appeal outside of that market.

[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zngpz4/prison-phones-
that...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zngpz4/prison-phones-that-go-up-
your-bum)

~~~
Arnt
This isn't a prison phone — prison phones need to charge quickly and run for
days on one charge.

This is for people who want to fit the phone in a pocket, and don't want to
use it often. The kind of person who needs to have google authenticator
available, and wants to never ever spend time browsing instagram. A sort of
person I want to be ;)

------
jjav
According to the linked page, the Jelly 2 is 95mm * 50mm * 17mm.

The Palm phone is 97mm * 51mm * 7mm, so it's smaller (particularly a lot
thinner) than the Jelly 2.

Still, it's wonderful to see more options in the pocket-sized phones!! A
vastly under-served market.

I bought the Palm phone after it was discussed here a month or so back. Very
happy with it, actually fits in my pocket and I can't feel it's there.

------
croes
With StockROM it would be interesting. The first Jelly doesn't seem to get
updates anymore.

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timw4mail
Wow...100% funded in 175 seconds

~~~
andrepd
And still virtually every single phone released in the past 3 years is bigger
than say 140x68cm, which is about the maximum you could call a "small" phone.

~~~
kgwxd
I bit almost instantly. I've been waiting for something that looked promising
in the small phone arena for years, this is the first one I've felt
comfortable trying. I assumed it wasn't going to have a headphone jack, but it
does!

------
omgwtfbyobbq
This reminds of my old HTC Magic.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_Magic](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_Magic)

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glitchc
That's a chunky monkey!

------
supernova87a
Everyone is so concerned about privacy. Apple, Android, Google, etc. spend
billions of $ and hundreds of people on managing privacy for their mobile
devices, vetting apps, monitoring and hardening the hardware against hacking.
Even then they don't get it totally right.

What are the chances some new small phone prototyper is going to do this
properly to the point I trust it enough that the novelty of something smaller
is more valuable than not getting hacked and monitored?

