Filed under: Technology
This is a direct sequel to my previous overview of the Unihertz Jelly 2. I recommend reading that review before this one, because many of the same points apply. This is going to be a less organized review that just points out the differences between the Jelly Star and Jelly 2.
So, there isn't a whole lot to add here about the Jelly Star. I bought one right away once they were put up on the Unihertz store because, well, I'm a sucker for technology with see-thru casing. I also have a confession to make: I have no idea where my Jelly 2 is right no, so I'm going off of memory here for the most part.
There are a few obvious physical differences here. First, the casing, like I mentioned before, is see-through and now comes in multple colors: blue, red, and black. I feel like the opaque shiny case of the Jelly 2 was prone to collecting alot of fingerprints, whereas it's definitely less obvious with this new transparent case. I mean, if you're not using the protective case that it comes with. It's also hugely visually appealing if you like seeing the innards of your devices. Second, the phone is ever so slightly thicker than the Jelly 2, maybe by 1mm or so. This probably shouldn't bother you because it's such a negligible difference, especially if you're already fine with the thickness of the Jelly 2.
Third, there are now LED lights that flash on the back of this thing. I thought this was cool at first (and my mom bought a Luna for the same gimmick), but it seemed hit-or-miss for me. Basically, the LEDs can go off for your incoming calls, notifications, or be used for audio visualization. The notification thing would be cool if you could customize which apps will cause the lights to go off, but it will go off for any notification you have turned on, unfortunately. The audio visualization is also marked as "music visualization", which seems cool in theory, but the flashing has always come off as completely random to me. I'd also constantly have to switch it on and off from the settings (or just turn off the LEDs altogether) if I wanted it to stop during, say, a Youtube video, so that's a bit of an annoyance. You can also set the lights to be always on, which I see no reason for unless you're using it as a flashlight (although there's already a regular flashlight built in, so...). There's also a "charging reminder" feature where, if you have the phone plugged in, the light will flash whenever you move your device. I don't understand the point of this at all so I never use it. Anyway, if you do like the LED feature, you can also save yourself from being flashbanged at night by setting a bedtime schedule for the lights.
As for actual performance differences, I think the Jelly Star runs perfectly fine (if not a little better) than the Jelly 2, but the boot time is atrocious. Now I don't remember how fast this thing booted when I first got it, but a year and a half later this thing takes nearly a minute to actually start. Could this be my fault? Sure, but it doesn't help that this device hasn't gotten an update since 2023. It's also running a Android 13 as opposed to the Jelly 2 being stuck at Android 11. I've got no strong opinions on that other than the fact that I find Android 13 to be absolutely delicious to look at, especially with this nice brown color scheme I've got going on. Oh, and let's not forget the camera. Now, again, we're not gonna be getting professional quality stuff off of here, but the camera quality is significantly better on here than the Jelly 2. In fact, it's better than the Titan Slim (which I have to do a review of soon), which is surprising based on the size difference. You'll still have to use a port of GCam, but it's worth it.
Okay, I tried being positive, but I do have one more complaint: this thing does NOT know what to do with SD cards. I'm still in the midst of figuring out how to best access my music library, but for a while I was trying to sync my music to a Samsung SD card using MusicBee. MusicBee itself was having a problem constantly trying to rewrite the same songs over and over, but the phone itself! God, this thing! Every so often, it would just forget the SD card was formatted for Android already, so all of a sudden I'd get a notification that I need to reformat my SD card, which meant redownloading all my music AGAIN! This is actually such a nightmare that I basically gave up entirely and just cut down my music library slightly so I could download it directly to the internal storage. Thankfully the Jelly Star has 256GB internal storage, double the size of the Jelly 2, so I could still fit alot of the stuff I enjoy on there. Since I can't compare this to the Jelly 2 right now, I can only apply this issue to the Jelly Star.
In the end, I did complain a good bit, but the fact that I lost my Jelly 2 clearly gives away the fact that I still fell for the delightful Jelly Star. That adorable red phone bewitched me the second I saw it in the Kickstarter announcement email, so we were destined to be. The camera, really, is a huge plus for me as well. Other than stuff like the boot time, anything the Jelly 2 did, the Jelly Star could do noticably better.
I actually have a new Unihertz phone I use as my daily driver now, but I love the Jelly Star so much that I still have it on my desk and have been trying to find alternate uses for it. I'm thinking maybe I'll turn this into a DAP since it runs so much better than my FiiO M9. I'll let you guys know how that turns out.
Again, if you find the premise of the Jelly 2 interesting, you should get the Jelly Star instead. It's only $30 more and you can buy it from Unihertz's official website for $229.