00:00It seems lately that all smartphones are getting obscenely large. Maybe this has to do with the
00:05fact that the average American spends about 5 hours on their phone every day, and it's easier
00:10to get sucked into a larger screen. But what if Apple were able to reverse course, save humanity,
00:16and make everything infinitesimally smaller? Inside this box is a $59 social experiment of a
00:23smartphone built as an exact replica of what a 3.8 inch iPhone Ultra Mini would be, although with
00:30one minor caveat that it's running Android, although some might consider that an upgrade.
00:36Before we durability test the world's smallest USB-C dynamic island enabled iPhone Ultra Mini clone,
00:42we're going to need some smaller durability testing tools, like a smaller lighter and smaller pry tools,
00:48and most importantly, a smaller JerryRig razor knife. You know that tiny pocket in your jeans that
00:55nobody actually knows what it's for? Well, apparently they started installing those mini pockets back in
01:00the 1890s in anticipation for my mini razor knife drop of 2025. Shout out to Mr. Levi's for his foresight.
01:08These mini knives use a standard sized, easy to replace miniature razor blade, and there are three
01:13colors, each of which are $9.99 at jerryrigknife.com. Or for this week only, buy any two colors and get
01:20the third for free. Pretty solid deal if you want to collect them all. But let's get back to the iPhone
01:25Ultra Mini clone. With a $60 price point, you might expect the screen to be made from plastic, but as we
01:31work our way up through the tiniest Mohs scale of hardness, we see our regular scratches at a level 6,
01:36with deeper grooves at a level 7. The iPhone Ultra Mini is off to a good start with real
01:42glass on the surface. There is a plastic earpiece grill up in the top between the glass and the frame.
01:47It won't be falling out on its own. And apparently the 2 megapixel hole punch selfie camera also opens
01:53up to do that dynamic island thing when you get phone calls, just like a real regular sized iPhone.
01:59Currently the Ultra Mini is using plastic on the side, as well as on the SIM card tray and the power
02:06button. But, genuine question, would you accept plastic on a phone this small from Apple if the
02:12price point was similar? $60 is hard to beat. One thing I know that Apple would never do though is add
02:17an expandable memory SD card slot, which makes this tray the most unrealistic part of the miniaturized
02:23clone. Now we know though that a phone the size of a credit card does have room for a SIM and SD
02:28card tray, so there's no excuse for modern flagships to not have one anymore. There is no waterproofing
02:34ring though, and no water resistance rating overall. There's more blue plastic along the top and left
02:39side, including the two plastic volume buttons. And down here at the bottom we start seeing why the
02:45Ultra Mini only costs $60. There is a USB-C port, which is awesome, but the speaker divots are
02:51aesthetically fake. Only a single real hole for the microphone in the left corner. Pulling over a real
02:57iPhone we see a plethora of mesh screened waterproofed holes for the stereo loudspeaker and microphones.
03:03But the real iPhone also costs near a thousand dollars, 15 times more than the Ultra Mini clone.
03:09Now on the back it might appear as if there are three cameras, but you're not going to be surprised
03:14at all to learn that this $59 smartphone in fact does not actually have three cameras. Spoiler alert,
03:21two of these circles you see are fake, as you'll see in a second. But we can just let it slide this once,
03:26since one, this phone is an experiment, and two, it's $59. I've seen people spend more than that on
03:33their lunch break. But yeah, if you ask your mom for an iPhone and she says we have iPhones at home,
03:38this is probably it, and she probably got it off a Timu. Burning the mini screen with our mini lighter,
03:44we find that the 3.8 inch display has a TFT LCD with a refresh rate, and 384 by 854 resolution,
03:54about the same as 480p. It lasted 10 seconds under the heat from my lighter, but did completely recover.
04:00Now you might be like, hey Jerry, I don't need a small phone and I can quit my big phone anytime I
04:05want. And while that is optimistically cute of you, I do agree that we don't need this small phone in
04:11particular since its only connectivity is Wi-Fi and 3G, and the 3G network was shut down in the USA a few
04:18years ago. So now this phone is more of a glorified iPod touch running Android than anything else.
04:23But at least it survives the bend test. The rear panel is made from a brittle plastic. It's got
04:29some antennas in the lower edge. And as we pull up the plastics around the camera lens, which
04:34surprisingly are also made from plastic, this is where you can see that while indeed there are
04:39three circles, two of them are just for decoration. While the single 5 megapixel rear camera is tucked
04:44into the scratched upper left circle. There are only four phillips head screws holding in the back
04:49plastics to the frame. I'll pop it out with my mini JerryRig knife, and immediately we see that not a
04:54single thing in this phone is modular or removable. Everything is soldered in place, including two
04:59wires that run up to the earpiece still hidden in the rear plastics. I'll pop the rear camera out,
05:04which interestingly enough has a single colored LED flash built right into the ribbon, but there is
05:09no optical image stabilization. Leaving the rear plastics and earpiece dangling off the motherboard,
05:14since I can't take it off, I assume that single earpiece also doubles as a loudspeaker. I'll try
05:19to pop out the battery. It's got 900 milliamp hours written on the side, which is strange since the
05:25Amazon listing said 2000. But what's a little typo among friends, right? Luckily the battery has not
05:31permanently glued. Thumbs up for that. And what's really cool though is that the lower antennas we
05:36removed earlier are connected to the main board with the same pogo style connectors that we saw on the
05:42framebook laptop we took apart last week. I'll peel back some metallic tape, which unplugs the
05:47Lego style display ribbon and remove some more graphite tape over the processor, which interestingly
05:53enough does not have a vapor chamber or heat sink. It's using the metal motherboard shield and the
05:58battery as a CPU cooler. The battery is still soldered to the motherboard. It seems a little risky to
06:03dump heat into the battery, but to each their own. I'll pull the SD card tray out from the frame,
06:08and then the rest of the motherboard can come loose. It was about here that I realized I never actually
06:13turned the phone off before taking it apart. So it's been fully detached from the frame and all
06:18the buttons while still being turned on. Kind of like that Robocop movie. I do hope it's still alive
06:23when I plug everything back in. And I guess phones are a whole lot cheaper to manufacture when nothing is
06:28modular, since solder is definitely cheaper than plugs and connectors. Would you look at that?
06:34Everything still works. And I mean, we all know that Apple would never actually do this,
06:38since the more we are glued to our phones, the more money they make. But hypothetically,
06:43if Apple ever did make an iPhone ultra mini with the bare necessities and non-addicting smaller screen
06:48size, would you buy it? Could you buy it? Or are you too locked in to the social media space to crawl
06:54back out? Let me know down in the comments. And don't let that tiny pocket in your jeans go empty.
07:00Snag one of my many jerry rig knives at jerryrigknife.com. And as always, thanks a ton for watching.
07:05I'll see you around.
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