The world's smallest 4G smartphone is affordable at the same time

If it wasn't obvious the world was yearning for a 2.45in Android smartphone, it is after the successful Kickstarter campaign of Jelly.

The Jelly and Jelly Pro are smartphones designed to be a backup handset for people who don't want to sacrifice too many features for the sake of getting a smaller phone. These devices are far from the most powerful things on the market, but Jelly is better than many cheap Android smartphones. Most notably, it runs on Android 7.0 Nougat and has LTE.

Unihertz, the maker behind Jelly, is a Shanghai-based team that initially set up a $30,000 goal for the phone. It blew past that goal to nearly $300,000 with more than a month left in the crowdfunding campaign. This isn't the most impressive Kickstarter ever launched, but it's a shocking amount of demand for a small, low-powered Android phone.

Part of the appeal is no doubt the price. The first earlybird price was $59, which makes the Jelly almost a disposable phone. It is now selling for $79, creeping up towards the $100 mark where Jelly will seem a lot less appealing. In fact, Unihertz statesthat the retail price will be $109. That might be a hard sell when decent $100 smartphones are not unheard of these days.

For people who find the Jelly's size irresistible, however, they can get quite a feature set in such a small package. The phone is equipped with a 1.1GHz quad-core processor, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage. In the Pro version, there's 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. It has a 950mAh battery, a 2MP front camera and 8MP rear camera. It supports Bluetooth 4.0, has GPS, and a gyroscope. These are all standard in smartphones these days, but having these things in such a small handset are part of the appeal here. The less common features are the dual SIM slots and a microSD card slot, making this an even better deal than what many would assume at first glance.

A China company should know there's no shortage of good, affordable smartphones these days. The Jelly could be perfect for those looking for something that fits easily in the pocket and won't be a huge loss if it breaks. At $60, many might accept the compromises of the Jelly phone. That might not be true above $100. Either way, there's plenty of competition in China that will probably be willing to see what the market will bear.