Here’s the world’s smallest 5G smartphone yet: An obscure Chinese manufacturer is set to launch a tiny handset called the Jelly Max, aimed at tiny hands. But who will ultimately use it?
Chinese manufacturer Unihertz has announced the upcoming launch of Jelly Max, which the company claims is the world’s smallest 5G smartphone.
The company made a message on X and followed it up with a teaser on its website, but Unihertz has a history of making unusual smartphones.
The TickTock series, for example, has a customizable 1.3-inch touchscreen built into the back. We reviewed the TickTock 5G , and you can see what we thought of the company’s previous 5G device here . The Atom devices are small and rugged (we’ve previously reviewed both the Atom and Atom XL ), while the Tank series of rugged phones comes with features like built-in DLP or laser projectors and laser rangefinders. The Titan series is like modern BlackBerrys with physical keyboards. We reviewed the Titan here.
4-5 inches?
Now there’s the Jelly series – tiny phones, aimed at people with Lilliputian hands. Probably.
Launching in 2023, the 3-inch Jelly Star features a MediaTek Helio G99 processor and 4G connectivity and was crowdfunded on Kickstarter in just five minutes. Unihertz has used Kickstarter to launch other phones, so it’s possible the Jelly Max will get a similar crowdfunding approach.
From the teaser image released by Unihertz, which shows the Jelly Max resting on a six-row keyboard with function keys, it seems likely that the device will have a screen size of 4 to 5 inches. It will be larger than the Jelly Star, hence the name Max.
We can also see in the photo that the device has a fingerprint reader built into the screen and a camera at the top left. Other than that, and the fact that it’s a 5G phone, we don’t know anything else at the moment.
Prices for the other smartphones Unihertz makes are generally reasonable. For example, the Jelly Star currently costs $209.
The 5G TANK3 Pro, which is available for pre-order, starts at $649.99, but that’s really on the high side for a Unihertz phone and it comes with a huge battery that pushes the price up. Our best guess would be around the $300 mark for the Jelly Max, but we’ll know for sure as more details roll in in the coming weeks.