A Closer Look At Reliance JioPhone, The 4G Feature Phone With An Effective Price Of Rs 0
The soon-to-launch Reliance JioPhone is the cheapest 4G VoLTE feature phone in the market, selling at Rs 1,500, which is completely refundable at the end of three years of ownership of the device.
Back in July, when the JioPhone was first announced, it seemed too good a deal to be true.
What grabbed headlines at the time was Mukesh Ambani's proclamation that the JioPhone will have a Rs 1,500 security deposit, which will be refunded after a three-year duration, if users decided to return the phone. Effectively, the phone's cost was reduced to just Rs 0.
So what does a "free" phone look like? Here we go...
The JioPhone looks like any feature phone with a keypad, really. Something that says "Welcome back to 2007" with its design and layout. The JioPhone comes with a 2.4-inch QVGA display, with 512 MB of RAM and 4 GB of internal storage, expandable up to 128 GB. It runs on KaiOS, based on Mozilla Firefox.
ALSO READ: Airtel Is Launching Its Rs 2,500 4G Smartphone To Compete With Reliance's JioPhone
But since this is a 4G VoLTE phone with some smart functions, the keyboard reflects those enhancements. There's a center button for Voice Input, which works pretty well, recognizes Indian English, too. Quick way to access functions of the phone. The Number 5 key also toggles as an SOS button, alerting your emergency contact of your location through an SMS.
If you want to save your 4G data limit, the JioPhone has built-in Wi-Fi to let you connect to free hotspots in public spaces or inside your home.
Apart from Radio, Music, JioTV, and Calendar, there's a Camera launcher, too. The JioPhone has a VGA 0.3MP front camera and a 2MP rear cam.
Photos are nothing home to write about, to be honest. But by feature phone standards, they're not bad. Photo captures are ok in decent light only.
Selfie camera on a feature phone? This one has it, for video chats. Your contact will be able to recognize it's you when you do a video call, rest assured.
The JioPhone has a built-in web browser, with quick shortcuts to Facebook, Wikipedia, Google and Twitter.
Its 2000 mAh battery is removable...
... revealing a nano SIM card slot and microSD card slot which can support up to 128GB additional space on top of the phone's 4GB internal memory.
Trespassing through the world of tech. <strong>Like A Boss!</strong>
