Unihertz Jelly 2 Review After One Month
The Unihertz Jelly 2 is truly an impressive 3-inch device. It has a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack, a USB-C cable, a decent midrange Mediatek processor, and Android 10 despite being one of the smallest Android smartphones on the market. We have been using the Jelly 2 with T-Mobile for a week, and have tested aspects such as battery life, performance, and app compatibility
Built Quality and Ports
The Jelly 2 comes with a solid built quality. It has an extremely light reflective back, a fingerprint sensor, and a decent camera. On the front there are 3 haptic buttons which are used for navigation, a selfie camera, and speaker. On the right side of the phone there is a USB type-C port, a power button, and a red custom button. The volume up and down buttons are on the left side of the phone. On the bottom of the phone there is 1 speaker, and a microphone, and on the top we have a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack.
UI and Performance
The Jelly 2 runs a lightly skinned version of Android 10. This skin just optimizes the operating system for the small screen. If you have used a Google Pixel phone, the phone’s UI will feel very familiar. The phone comes with basic features such as the Play Store, Google Assistant, the stock android settings app, and a camera app. Gesture navigation is automatically enabled on the Jelly 2, but the haptic buttons can still be used by default. We highly recommend using the haptic-buttons over gesture navigation because gesture navigation is very faulty on the Jelly 2. The performance has been flawless while performing daily tasks such as messaging, calling, and using Google Chrome. It was a little hard to use google maps on the small screen, but it still performs well. We watched some YouTube videos, which played very smoothly, but the screen size of the Jelly 2 makes it hard to look at for too long.
Carrier Compatibility Warning
The Jelly 2 is only compatible with AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile according to Unihertz’s Ebay seller page. Click here to view: https://www.ebay.com/itm/164691966277?mkevt=1&mkpid=0&emsid=e11051.m43.l1465&mkcid=7&ch=osgood&euid=daf253edc88f4d23ba2276c5f0432071&bu=44860071496&osub=-1%7E1&crd=20210828232815&segname=11051&sojTags=ch%3Dch%2Cbu%3Dbu%2Cosub%3Dosub%2Ccrd%3Dcrd%2Csegname%3Dsegname%2Cchnl%3Dmkcid. In 2021, many carrier companies are planning to shut down their 3G and 4G lines soon. We tried setting up this phone with AT&T, but it was rejected. Even though the Jelly 2 is a 4G smartphone, AT&T recognized it as a 3G phone, and rejected it because they already stopped activating 3G phones. According to AT&T, this isn’t the only smartphone that gets miss-recognized as a 3G phone. We then tried T-Mobile, and got it to work with a 4G network, but still are unsure how long T-Mobile will support 3G and 4G smartphones. Please be aware that your connection might terminate soon.
App Compatibility
Another great feature about this phone is that a surprising quantity of apps are available on the Google Play Store. Apps such as google voice, Waze, Galaxy Wearables app, Samsung Accessory Service, and Roblox are all available for download. We have not come across any apps that aren’t compatible with the Jelly 2 yet.
Battery Life
The battery life on this phone is not the best. It is far lower than phones such as the iPhone 11 or the Pixel 5. We were able to get a little more than 30 hours of battery from this phone with extremely light use and battery saver on. All notifications were off except for calls, and we hardly ever checked the phone. Since this phone has fairly short battery life, this phone can clearly succeed in decreasing your screen time. You should not be on this phone any more than you need to.
Network Connection Issue
One small and rarely-occurring problem we have found with the Jelly 2 is that if we leave it on airplane mode for 2 hours or more, then turn it off, it may sometimes fail to connect to the internet. Although it still tells you how many bars you have on your cellular network, you can’t connect to the internet. What’s even more peculiar, is if you connect another device (such as a laptop) to your Jelly 2’s hotspot, the external device gets an internet connection while your Jelly 2 doesn’t. Thankfully, this issue doesn’t happen very often, but still make sure to carry another device when traveling.