A new phone has hit crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, and it may be the one for you if you don’t want a big screen device any more. It’s the Unihertz Jelly Max, and it has a 5.05-inch screen, making it positively small next to phones like the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra and the Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max. However, where the Jelly Max keeps the screen small, one of its other dimensions is far from diminutive.
Unihertz is a well-established phone maker better known for its rugged phones and unusual phones like the Titan, which has a physical keyboard below the screen. The Jelly Max is the latest in Unihertz’s Jelly range of small phones, and its claim to fame is that it has 5G connectivity, making it one of the smallest phones available with the feature. However, just because the screen is small, doesn’t mean the rest of the phone is similarly tiny.
The Jelly Max is bizarrely thick at 16.3mm, which is at odds with its genuinely mini 128mm height and hand-friendly 62mm width. The design is simple, and its rounded body makes it look a bit like an original Motorola Moto G, just much, much thicker. We like the transparent casing though. Oddly, it’s not the battery that adds to the Jelly Max’s size, as it’s a fairly normal 4,000mAh cell, but it’s likely a combination of this and a fairly impressive camera inside a small-by-modern-standards frame.
The 100-megapixel main camera probably takes up a bit of room inside the small phone, plus it’s also joined by an 8MP telephoto camera that apparently gives a 3.4x optical zoom feature. On the front is a 32MP selfie camera. The rest of the specification includes a MediaTek Dimensity 7300 processor, 12GB of RAM, 256GB of storage space, a fingerprint sensor on the back of the phone, and 66W fast charging. The software is Android 14, there’s NFC for mobile payments, and global 5G band support.
Unihertz has certainly made a phone that’s different to most other devices sold by better known brands today, and if you don’t mind the substantial girth that comes with the small screen, it won’t cost much to give it a try. At the time of writing the cheapest Kickstarter deal for the Jelly Max is $259, it’s expected to ship in October this year if you decide to back it, and the project has already passed its funding goal. However, remember Kickstarter campaigns can run into delays and are subject to other alterations, and although Unihertz has run several before this, you should be aware changes are possible between now and the time the phone arrives.
