Unihertz Jelly 2E – smartphone with 3“ screen | Hacker News Reader

Unihertz Jelly 2E – smartphone with 3“ screen

unihertz.com

62 pointsbmaupin63 comments

The Jelly Star is interesting too, another 3" phone with Android 13 and better specs than the 2e: https://www.unihertz.com/products/jelly-star

The Jelly 2 is also quite a bit faster. The 2e is slow enough that I wouldn’t expect it to be a great experience for most people.

I don't game on phones, so I don't got any problems with my 2E. Only thing unusable is the camera, that only is useful for notes

I bought a Jelly Pro a few years ago and I regretted it.

I am part of an on-call schedule but I don't feel comfortable mingling personal devices and work apps and credentials. I wanted an inexpensive device that was small enough I could keep in my pocket with my personal devices. In return for wanting both "cheap" and "small" I was willing to compromise significantly on "performance." All I wanted it to do was to receive texts and phone calls and occasionally a Slack push notification or two.

What I found is that after the OS had been powered on for a few hours, I couldn't even reliably receive texts and phone calls, they would either cause the Phone app to freeze or they just wouldn't ring at all, instead sending a "missed call" push notification minutes later. I don't understand how a company can sell a "phone" that can't even do that much.

I really wanted to like this form factor and still today I would still enjoy having one, but I don't think I could give any more money to Unihertz. I couldn't even get a refund for a clearly defective product.

The jelly 2e works much better. Maybe slightly worse than the average android phone I've had, but very much acceptable.

I never had that problem but the phone did a lot of things in the name of preserving its tiny battery. It was an unreliable running partner and didn't respect any settings to keep apps running. Even then, the battery wouldn't last a full day. I loved the form factor but I'm too forgetful to charge twice a day.

I think lots of apps probably wouldn't work on such a small screen now.

I am tempted to try using one of the new ones.

Honestly you would probably be better off with an iPhone SE (the original one) for that use case today as long as Slack still works on iOS 15.

You know, I like it. But using an on-screen keyboard on that would be exhausting. Also many apps are built with at least 5” screen real estate in mind - so with the keyboard up, I wonder if it would be annoying to type a response/comment. I know I struggled with an OG iPhone SE, and that experience is the source of my concern here.

I imagine the target audience probably won’t write lengthy emails on this thing. Either way, glad to see some cheap and small Android phone that looks relatively nonsense-free.

I've used this phone for 1.5 years now. I've been pleasantly surprised at how many apps and websites work just fine with it. ... Actually, HN used to work fine and broke just a couple days ago (started making the text tiny and way too wide to view), and I'm not sure what happened.

I have pretty small hands, and I find the on screen keyboard okay. I do make a lot more typos than I used to with a bigger phone, and type slower, but it's not a big deal for me.

The biggest downside is the camera sucks. I'm hoping the next version (Jelly Star) will be better.

> Actually, HN used to work fine and broke just a couple days ago (started making the text tiny and way too wide to view), and I'm not sure what happened.

I think the stylesheet changed. This happened to me as well, I had to switch to a reader app.

I typically use Firefox on Android, Samsung (normal sized)

To be honest, I'm just somehow incompatible with touchscreen text input regardless of the screen size. It works 90% of the time, sure, but the remaining 10% I want to yeet the damn thing at a wall for repeatedly failing to read my mind. This is especially exacerbated when I'm typing in Russian — which I do much more than in English — where each word can have one of something like 30 different suffixes depending on the context it's used in. Computers are quite good at applying formal rules to input data, yet somehow, no touchscreen keyboard does this. You added a word to the dictionary? Too bad, that's the one form that won't be autocorrected, now add all the remaining ones.

No one seems to question whether a qwerty keyboard is a good fit for this. Everyone somehow accepts that as the only way. But in reality, it doesn't pass even the slightest scrutiny. It's qwerty because that's the layout most people are familiar with from computer keyboards. It's not optimized to take advantage of the touchscreen hardware. Instead, it's a layout that works beautifully for full hands, crammed into a screen where you have use it with just two thumbs that often miss the tiny keys.

I tried to rethink touchscreen text input once[1] but this prototype ended up having such a steep learning curve that even I myself switched back to qwerty. I might try it again sometime in the future but I'm also open to ideas.

[1] https://twitter.com/grishka11/status/1517431598857302019

have you tried 8pen/8vim, it looks like it makes more sense than qwerty for the small screen, though, it has a bit of a learning curve. Also, I know that for japanese, you have those 12 key keyboards, where holding down while dragging up, down, left, or right, means different characters. I think that could work for other languages as well.

> I think that could work for other languages as well.

That was exactly what I built for Russian and English, see my linked thread. It ended up not working as well as I imagined. Maybe I should be smarter with the layout instead of making it alphabetical.

> 8pen/8vim

Neither of them support Russian :(

8vim does have a Ukrainian layout file but while similar, there are some letters that Russian has but Ukrainian lacks (ы э ъ ё). Though I suppose I can make a pull request.

edit: I installed and tried 8vim. While a nice idea and I can see myself using it, this whole layers thing does kinda ruin it and you do need layers for a Cyrillic alphabet if you also want to have punctuation. 8vim also lacks the ability to quickly switch languages.

You might want to try out MessagEase, which is a flick syle keyboard like the Japanese ones mentioned above.

There's room for a lot of punctuation on the same layer as the alphabet, plus support for ctrl/alt/F-keys. I find it great for working with ssh.

I have a similarly small phone (3.3" screen but the same sized case, but much slower lol).

The swipe keyboard I have installed is easy and I actually have it shrunk to the smallest size allowed to minimize movement. I don't post on hacker news with it, I only use sites like HN on my PC, but I am able to write reasonably long emails (although I mainly just email myself notes).

I've used Android phones since the very first one, which had a 3.2" screen. With a swipe keyboard it's fine, I really enjoyed it.

I found on the original jelly that typing was totally fine when using swiping (not Swype but the built in feature of Google keyboard)

I've been using the Unihertz Atom for three and a half years now. I absolutely love it. The GPS is better than my Sony Xperia had. I've thrown it across rooms to demonstrate how durable it is. Its small size is always a conversation starter.

A few months ago I bought the new Jelly, and while it has a slightly larger screen, I didn't like the updated version of Android. I went back to my Atom. If anything happened to it, I would immediately buy another without a second thought.

Oh the atom got pretty bad reviews on Kickstarter. Cameras getting foggy after it turning out to be not so waterproof, pieces of rubber coming off etc.

I had bad experiences with the first jelly (non pro). The promised Android upgrade never came to the non pro version. Other than that it was ok but not something I'd repeat.

Anybody ever switch from iPhone to android back and forth? I’m Apple products top to bottom but wouldn’t hate being able to switch to something like this for a few weeks at a time to change my habits…but it just seems gnarly and painful to make that kind of switch given how deep I am into Apple ecosystem (photos, iMessage, etc)

I make the switch from time to time. I don't like or rely on Apple photos, and my friends are mostly on WhatsApp or, surprisingly, RCS.

There's a handful of apps that aren't available on one or another. I really like f-droid, too, and I wish that apple had a free software directory somewhere.

I find Android Auto less finicky than CarPlay and Google Assistant more useful than Siri. But it feels like voice assistants are actually getting dumber as time goes on.

But eventually I get frustrated and switch to another phone, there's always something to complain about.

If you try to maintain the same level of privacy as iOS (no unencrypted personal information server-side), then android is basically unusable.

The main issue is that most apps require location services or other google stuff that also needlessly sends private data to google. (There are attempts to reimplement the location services api, but they were all flaky for me).

It’s not just that one service, and in practice apps will crash on startup for a week or so, then work, then regress again.

The second problem is that you have to pick third party apps with reasonable privacy practices, and those are buried in the app store search rankings (FDroid makes them easier to find.)

If you don’t care about privacy, then you might have a passable experience under android. The main advantages I noticed were that you can run emulators, and that it is easy to pirate abandonware. (I have a BB-8 sphero, and they didn’t renew the IP license with lucas arts, mostly bricking it. On android, it is possible to pirate the old bundled software. On iOS it is not.)

The real problem is that you sacrifice privacy for quality of life.

I have had so many fucking bugs with my iPhone 13 Pro Max:

The camera fucking SUCKS, even compared to my pixel 2 xl. Every photo looks like a cheap watercolor. And the computational photography (night mode) is fucking terrible. The image stabilization is nonexistent compared to the pixel 2 xl, and don’t even get me started on video stabilization

The keyboard will randomly get earsplittingly loud for no reason at all and will have huge typing delay.

Notifications are just worse

My messages app crashes frequently, and contact pictures refuse to show up about half the time

They keyboard is fucking awful compared to gboard, and the iOS gboard isn’t good

Google assistant is orders of magnitude better than Siri, and let’s be real: if you use any assistant it is going to listen to you

Apple Maps is terrible compared to google maps, and apple optionally chooses to gimp the lock screen navigation of everything besides Apple Maps (also yelp )

Voice typing is truly horrendous

The notes app is shit, just doesn’t work very well

I could keep going, but having been on apple thrice and android 4 times, I’m throughly done with apple unless they make some MASSIVE changes

Sort of related, but I switched from an iPhone to a Unihertz Titan with the goal of reducing smartphone screen time. Ultimately switched back to iPhone because I found that remaining connected to my social circle necessitated an iPhone. Of course, YMMV.

Link to my experience if you’re interested: https://rickytakkar.com/blog_smartphone_detox.html

I think mkbhd (a tech reviewer) may have made a video on that.

I use this as my main phone. I'll never go back. It's exactly the cure I needed for smartphone addiction.

I had an Atom XL. Unihertz give up supporting their (very buggy) software quickly, and their tech support is poor. Their entire business model seems to be to churn out new phones as fast as possible to pull in new customers.

While I'd love to see different form factors being successful, steer clear of Unihertz.

It has an IR blaster. Why is this the only phone I've seen in ages with an IR blaster? And the rest of its specs look decent, although the battery is a little poor and the lack of USB OTG is a bit unfortunate. Still, if it had decent 3rd-party ROM support I'd actually consider it.

Finally someone mentions software support. Android 12 is good now, but what about in a couple years?

Knowing unihertz they'll abandon it as soon as they have a newer model out. Long term support is not their thing. You'll be lucky to get one version upgrade (my non pro original jelly never got one despite being promised) and a handful of security patches.

I'm not even as worried about the major versions as security patches. I rather prefer my phones to last more than a year, which is kinda hard when their security stance looks like so much swiss cheese.

I have a Titan Pocket and just love it. Unihertz has also been a fantastic company to interact with: I broke my titan, walked into the ocean, and they replaced it for a small fraction of the purchase cost.

I only wish the camera was better.

That said, I think this Jelly looks like a good phone for my kids.

Do they have a waterproof version?

Of the pocket? I wish. Make it water proof and improve the camera and it could easily be the perfect phone for me.

Whatever apps that don't work with the screen dimensions I just don't use. Every communication app I need works fine, as does every map and weather app.

I have zero issues with the Proton suite, OSMand, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, Messenger, Authy, WeatherCan, Ring, TidesNearMe, Firefox, Foobar, Podcast Republic, Cx File, Newpipe, and more.

The atom series are supposedly waterproof though reviews show very mixed results.

I'm still using my Palm Phone, as I find it better looking and I think the form factor is nicer than the Unihertz phones. I am able to type pretty easily with Microsoft's swipe text keyboard.

But as it was not particularly fast in 2018, it's only a matter of time until software becomes too slow to use on the phone. Even opening the text messaging app has a visual lag nowadays. The battery life is also not great; I don't really care but it seems to annoy my friends lol.

Eventually I'll probably end up with a Unihertz, but I'm still holding out for a new similarly sleek small phone from Palm.

In terms of battery life, you could probably give it a renew by having the battery replaced with a new one. Other than that you could likely keep using it. There’s no reason for old devices to become slower except:

- The internal databases (such as the messages database) growing larger than the devs intended

- Not enough free storage space to comfortably allow swap files

- 3rd party background processes taking over

Bad code can sometimes happen (usually “just” memory leaks requiring a reboot), but what we usually think of as a rule (“old devices are slower”) is manufacturers pushing more and more features on to the device until it can no longer keep up.

Nah the manufacturer isn't pushing anything, this phone hasn't been updated by the manufacturer in many years. It's the apps that are slowing down. I have replaced the Palm Phone with newer Palm Phones after breaking a couple, the battery life isn't any better.

For me, the tradeoff is still worth it for now because it has the best form factor. But at some point within the next decade, it will become impossible.

> Nah the manufacturer isn't pushing anything, this phone hasn't been updated by the manufacturer in many years.

That’s what I was thinking, and my instinct says you could just keep using it for another decade.

> It’s the apps that are slowing down.

That doesn’t make sense to me unless it’s one of the reasons I mentioned above: their internal DB getting too large (solution: wipe data), or the app company pushing updates.

But I can tell you know what you’re doing so I’m not going to try to convince you you’re wrong.

>the app company pushing updates.

It's not one specific app. I need to use up-to-date versions of apps to connect to various services, and I need to visit modern versions of websites because those are the only websites that are available. They are increasingly resource intensive but my phone will not get any faster. Therefore at some point, this phone will become unusable. Probably within five years.

I just want a dumb phone which does simple SMS and phone calls, but every brand I try has weird glitches that mess up texting. I just want an oldschool nokia

I believe this is the page you're looking for: https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/0920BDAE-2CCA-43D5-A91F-B...

I've actually tried 2 out of 3 listed there and they both had issues. Poor software on them

Have you tried the Punkt MP02?: https://www.punkt.ch/en/products/mp02-4g-mobile-phone/

No because thats a ridiculous price

379$!

The phone doesn’t fit into a pocket as well as an iPhone SE since it’s thicker which overall is a much better phone. It’s also not as small as a smartwatch that can also replace a phone and the smartwatch is even more restrictive than this is if you’re “digital detoxing”

I don’t see the appeal outside the price and that small android’s are hard to come by.

I often got the problem that I have to find the 2E in my pockets.

Just got one to stuff into my kid's backpack, for tracking and emergencies. I'm probably going to buy a Unihertz for myself, when it's time to upgrade. It's a little thick but it fits in a pocket so much better. I'd actually trade but the size is necessary for stashing in her bag.

I was rocking an Orchid F1 for a few months with talk text and navigation.

It ran a super old version of Android and didn't have a browser. It scratched a "detox" itch but made me less reachable at work in a way I felt made me less valuable so I I went back to a smart phone.

This phone seems like a good happy medium that adds friction at the right places.

Here’s a really fun review of the Jelly 2 that someone showed me a few months ago. https://maxread.substack.com/p/the-worlds-stupidest-smallest...

I ran the universe Titan for about 9 months. I really wanted a keyboard and I figured the small screen would help curb my usage.

While it was fun, I found too many apps simply can’t handle that small of a screen. It annoyed me to the point that I switched back to nearly the largest screen I could find.

Reminds me a bit of my old Palm Pre from 2009. I really miss that damn phone.

I don't understand how the smartphone market is so enormous but the variety is so small. Why do I have to carry around a phone over twice as tall as it is wide when the space my thumb can reach is roughly circular? If I'm holding my phone balanced in my hand I can neither reach the navigation area at the bottom nor the notification area at the top. If I get a phone small enough to reach the whole screen it's so narrow I'm wasting a ton of potential width.

Sell me a 16:9 phone again dammit.

> Resolution: 480 × 854 pixels

This phone is 16:9: 480*16/9 = 853.333.

16:8 is too much but 16:9 is what you want?

To be honest I'd prefer 16:10 but 16:9 is a more realistic dream.

I own the first Jelly and it was absolutely unusable and badly in every way. Avoid!!

Bring back the slider!

I just looking for something like this. Thanks.

Does the phone screen PWM free?

A surprisingly relevant question for (us) people who care about it.

Even my Pixel phone has visible PWM at anything less than 100% brightness, and my iPhone has visible PWM at anything below 50%. :(

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