Honestly? I'm a fan of this company. It seems like they just make phones that break the universal "palm-sized glass rectangle" meta that's completely subsumed all designs. I remember when I was a kid, there was so much diversity in phone designs! Sliding keyboards, folding screens, the little trackball on blackberries, etc. Now, it feels like the only variation available is size/OS/camera/CPU.
I'm currently using their Jelly 2, which is a smartphone that's just exactly tiny enough to do all the things I need and no more. The screen is 3", and the tiny form factor is still enough for what I want to use my phone for: messaging, calls, all my music apps, all my podcast/audiobook apps, maps/transit schedules, checking email. What the tiny screen is NOT enough for is content consumption - and that's the point. Such a simple idea, but it's worked wonders for my phone addiction. I just do all that on an actual computer now, where it's much more manageable and not constantly in my pocket.
Anyways, the 22,000 mAh phone looks like a miss to me, but I really respect that they're trying to do something different.
The phones are nice, but I can't say I'm a fan of the company. They use Mediatek chipsets and are blatant GPL violators. The stock firmware is untrustworthy and if you want to run LineageOS you're in for a flaky time, at the mercy of random volunteers (whose work I nevertheless appreciate).
This phone might be a miss for you, but I'm going to guess you don't work outside or in the field?
Massive battery, massive flashlight, rugged and waterproof. I work behind a keyboard now, but there was a time in my life where this would have been the perfect work phone.
Yup, runs Anki. It does have a camera, fingerprint sensor, and SD card slot. It's a decently capable Android device: haven't ran into any stutter or lag. The only issue is the occasional UI glitch with apps that aren't designed for small screen sizes, but I haven't ran into any show-stoppers yet. Still worth it to me
I was concerned by the battery at first, but turns out it's more than enough to last a day or two since I'm no longer constantly pulling up twitter at every free moment.
You're right, but its the standard that everyone has converged on. The assumption is that it is for lithium ion chemistry which is nominally 3.7v
I don't know if this is going to frustrate you more, but I recently needed a small battery so I picked up this unit[0] at walmart, where it came rated in mAh for both 3.7v and 5v. The battery itself also has WH marked on it. A step in... a direction I guess
Be aware though that unihertz is exceptionally bad at updates.
I had the original jelly (non-pro) and they didn't even provide the Android 8 Oreo update they promised in the Kickstarter. Only the pro version got that but it was promised for both.
Also security updates were few and far between. Only buy this if you don't care about updates at all.
With their later models there have been a lot of quality concerns, like the rugged Atom losing rubber parts and getting water in the camera despite being sold as waterproof. I didn't get that one but I followed the Kickstarter comments waiting to buy it in case it turned out really good.
We need to invent the "rugged" equivalent of "tacti-cool".
What confuses me is the effort pretending to be rugged seems nearly as high as the effort of actually being rugged would have been. Maybe it's cargo-cult design, like with bad aero?
Don't go near Unihertz. I have an atom xl, and it's the worst phone I've ever had. It's riddled with major bugs. Their support completely sucks. Their business model seems to be focusing 100% of their r&d budget on new phones, and ignoring existing models.
This is dumb, once you're no longer trying to make the phone paper-thin, why keep the battery non-removable? Just give me a phone that runs on a couple of swappable 18650's and call it a day. I don't need 22000 mah. Make an snap-on enclosure for more 18650s if people want that.
Just buy a dang external battery pack charger. All these phones remind me of something ill see at 5 below in the future. The worst part about these phones is the extreme lack of software updates,patches,and security fixes. This phone is for fools.
Maybe this is my light-sensitive headache speaking, but I think I would live in fear of accidentally turning the flashlight on. That is a freaking monster.
I agree that the lack of a microSD slot is annoying, though not entirely unreasonable with the whole value proposition of a "ruggedized" phone.
The FM radio is entirely baked-in to the MediaTek MT6789 SoC, and uses anything connected to the 3.5mm jack as the antenna for better reception. Assuming this thing is intended for use at jobsites, it's not entirely unreasonable to assume that having a functional FM radio and 3.5mm jack would be desired.
I suppose that's fair, I didn't know they still put FM in SoCs.
Still, a jobsite seems like a bad place for a 3.5mm. Any jobsite radio will likely either have FM built in, or Bluetooth, and and aux cord is just one more thing to get grime on it and clog your connector.
Actually using it for headphones seems like an unnecessary safety hazard that Bluetooth would fix.
I don’t know what that means to me (as a consumer), and between the obnoxious hard to hide chat window and the bright, garish graphics instead of a description, I’m not impressed.
I'm currently using their Jelly 2, which is a smartphone that's just exactly tiny enough to do all the things I need and no more. The screen is 3", and the tiny form factor is still enough for what I want to use my phone for: messaging, calls, all my music apps, all my podcast/audiobook apps, maps/transit schedules, checking email. What the tiny screen is NOT enough for is content consumption - and that's the point. Such a simple idea, but it's worked wonders for my phone addiction. I just do all that on an actual computer now, where it's much more manageable and not constantly in my pocket.
Anyways, the 22,000 mAh phone looks like a miss to me, but I really respect that they're trying to do something different.