– Reality-based Fiction –
O. Guy Morley
March 6, 2024
This story is based on the actual experience of MT who has been using Unihertz Jelly Star (since October 2023), probably the tiniest practical Android smart phone. Since MT is a sort of minimalist mobile phone user, she does not need one of those most powerful phones. Instead, it is more important that she can carry her phone in her small purse or in her even smaller pockets (when available at all). So, she has been a fan of tiny phones, starting with Nokia C6-01 [2012-2019] and then continuing with Palm Phone (PVG100) with an accompanying Mophie Juice Pack [2019-2023]. Compared to these two, Jelly Star is thicker and probably heavier, which is not a problem for her. So far, she likes Jelly Star very much. Also, it was nice that the phone came with a case and a screen protector pre-installed (with one extra).
MT’s main use of her phone includes: SMS/texts, voice calls, note taking (also as a task list), music, and certain Internet tools (email, LINE, maps, web browsing, store apps, etc.). She can do all these within her mobile plan (Tello unlimited texts/100 min voice/1GB data for $6/month). There would be days when she only sends/receives a dozen of texts and listens to music. On the other hand, there are days when she uses her phone more extensively, esp. when she travels. MT uses WiFi at home and keeps her mobile data and Bluetooth connections at all time.
Reflecting MT’s light use of her phone, it is set up quite simply and minimally. She started with almost no permissions for almost everything and then enabled only the permissions she absolutely needed. She also limits the apps’ network (data/WiFi) and battery access using the “Apply advanced settings” option from the “Setting” menu.
The connectivity of Jelly Star seems more than sufficient for MT. First, the phone has dual SIM slots. MT uses the second slot for her legacy T-Mobile SIM (backup) or a travel data SIM, depending on the situation. The frequency band coverage seems sufficient, as she was able to use it in Japan with any of the SIM’s she tried. The WiFi and Bluetooth connections always seem to work, even when other devices did not. She also connects the phone with her computer via a USB cable for image download and copying essential files from the computer. Occasionally, she uses Android Auto. With one car, this can be done wirelessly; with the other, older car, she needs to use a USB cable. However, this seems to be the limitation of the older car. She also thinks that the GPS function is pretty good. She has not used the NFC connection, but this must be an essential feature nowadays, esp. for increasingly popular contactless payment methods.
As for the screen size, it is indeed tiny and hard to see small fonts. However, she uses a computer for most of reading-intensive work anyway. The size of the on-screen keyboard is a challenge as well; it must be prohibitive for many people, esp. with vision problems. Even MT makes frequent errors when typing on the phone. Still, she is used to it and also considering the limited amount of typing, she can live with it.
The battery size (2000mAh) seems sufficient for MT. With light use, it easily lasts 3 days with a single charge. Even with heavier use while traveling, it still lasted more than a day. In addition, the phone seems to charge fairly quickly. As for the battery indicator, although it is possible to display the charge percentage inside the battery symbol, it is too small to read. So, MT added a more readable battery widget on the home screen. Once after the trip to Japan, the battery life appeared to be much shorter, say, about one day (with light use). Initially, she thought that the heavier use of the phone affected the performance. However, after completely discharging and restarting the phone, the battery life returned to the previous level.
The memory size of 256GB is more than adequate for MT. The quality of the camera seems decent as well with fairly high resolution of 48MP. Occasionally, she listens to music stored in the phone. She usually uses Bluetooth earbuds. But the availability of the 3.5mm headphone jack is a plus. Especially on long flights to/from Japan and while using public transportation there, headphones were more comfortable. The sound level from the headphones were sufficient even during the flights. As for the phone speaker, she rarely uses it for listening to music. Still, the quality and loudness of the sound seem adequate. It works well as a speaker phone for voice calls: loud and clear. In this respect, she thinks that Jelly Star is better than Palm Phone even though Palm Phone has stereo (2) speakers.
MT also liked the initial setup of Android 13 on Jelly Star. It included a decent set of apps, not too many, not too few. Naturally, she needed to add her usual apps: Bluemail, LINE, DuckDuckGo, ColorNote, AIMP, Office reader, Panera, United Airlines, etc. All of these work fine. There are features MT does not really use: LED lights, NFC, fingerprint recognition, FM radio, and infrared control.
There was a time MT had to deal with a USB connection problem. All of sudden, she was unable to use the USB connection (both for charging and data transfer). At first, she thought that the USB port was physically damaged. However, after changing/resetting the “Default USB configuration” in one of the developer options (which had been enabled), the USB port was working again. This problem happened several times, esp. when trying to use the phone with Android Auto. Luckily, she was always able to fix it with the same method.
Obviously, Jelly Star is not for everyone. However, there must be people like MT, who would choose it without hesitation. In fact, the manufacturer, Unihertz seems to have captured devoted customers with their unique models.
Although based on real events, this still is a work of fiction.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
PathAPaz 