JioPhone - Complete Features Overview & Price
Reliance Jio top boss, Mukesh Ambani has announced the latest disruption in Indian telecom market, called 'JioPhone'. But not only that, Ambani backed it up with innovative price plan. The JioPhone will be available for beta testing starting August 15 and pre-booking will begin on August 24 August. We'll bring you more information about the phone and booking through various discussions on CrazyEngineers. Let's look at the feature list of the phone and what you'll be paying to get it.
As you'd expect, the JioPhone is a 4G VoLTE phone. Ambani did not mention whether the phone is locked to Jio network; but it likely is. The phone will support about 22 Indian languages. While the phone does have a physical keyboard, it can accept voice inputs. The voice powered service seems to be powered by Google Voice assistant and allows you to make calls or send messages and even browse the Internet by issuing voice commands.
The phone will also come preloaded with Jio Apps like Jio Music, Jio TV and Jio Cinema. The phone seems to have a loud inbuilt speaker that eliminates the need of using headphones. The phone is also equipped with emergency contact feature, typically found on smartphones. In order to activate it, user will have to long press the #5 key on the keypad. The phone will then send SOS message to the preset phone numbers. The distress message will include your current location as well so that you can be easily tracked.
An important feature that will be unlocked through firmware upgrade in September is NFC. Ambani informed that users will be able to use it to link their AADHAR and PAN numbers and then make payments just by tapping on the POS consoles. We believe a feature phone with NFC payments capability will offer a huge push to the Digital India initiative.
Jio phone will have free voice calling to any network all over India, forever. Ambani said that it's ironic that the smartphone users pay nothing for the voice while smartphone users have to pay about Rs. 150 or more for voice calling. Jio is disrupting that with its Rs. 153, everything unlimited plan only available for JioPhone users. The phone will have Jio Dhan Dhana Dhan offer available exclusively.
An important accessory that will be made available with the phone is the Jio Phone TV-Cable. Those who subscribe to the Rs. 309/month pack will have access to about 3-4 hours of video content that can be played directly on any TV, including the old CRT TVs. We are not sure if the cable will be included along with the JioPhone or needs to be bought as a separate accessory.
In order to reach as many consumers as possible, Jio announced sachets recharges viz. Rs. 24 for 2 days and Rs. 54 / week. The pricing is likely to give sleepless nights to Jio rivals in Indian Telecom Markets.
Mr. Ambani also announced that the phone would be made available effectively 'free of cost'. The users will have to deposit Rs. 1500 with Jio which would be refunded completely after a span of 3 years. There were rumors that Reliance would charge Rs. 500 per unit. However the new pricing plan is likely to attract a lot of consumers to Jio network through JioPhone.
Do you think we are witnessing another disruption in connectivity in India? Let us know.
As you'd expect, the JioPhone is a 4G VoLTE phone. Ambani did not mention whether the phone is locked to Jio network; but it likely is. The phone will support about 22 Indian languages. While the phone does have a physical keyboard, it can accept voice inputs. The voice powered service seems to be powered by Google Voice assistant and allows you to make calls or send messages and even browse the Internet by issuing voice commands.
The phone will also come preloaded with Jio Apps like Jio Music, Jio TV and Jio Cinema. The phone seems to have a loud inbuilt speaker that eliminates the need of using headphones. The phone is also equipped with emergency contact feature, typically found on smartphones. In order to activate it, user will have to long press the #5 key on the keypad. The phone will then send SOS message to the preset phone numbers. The distress message will include your current location as well so that you can be easily tracked.
An important feature that will be unlocked through firmware upgrade in September is NFC. Ambani informed that users will be able to use it to link their AADHAR and PAN numbers and then make payments just by tapping on the POS consoles. We believe a feature phone with NFC payments capability will offer a huge push to the Digital India initiative.
Jio phone will have free voice calling to any network all over India, forever. Ambani said that it's ironic that the smartphone users pay nothing for the voice while smartphone users have to pay about Rs. 150 or more for voice calling. Jio is disrupting that with its Rs. 153, everything unlimited plan only available for JioPhone users. The phone will have Jio Dhan Dhana Dhan offer available exclusively.
An important accessory that will be made available with the phone is the Jio Phone TV-Cable. Those who subscribe to the Rs. 309/month pack will have access to about 3-4 hours of video content that can be played directly on any TV, including the old CRT TVs. We are not sure if the cable will be included along with the JioPhone or needs to be bought as a separate accessory.
In order to reach as many consumers as possible, Jio announced sachets recharges viz. Rs. 24 for 2 days and Rs. 54 / week. The pricing is likely to give sleepless nights to Jio rivals in Indian Telecom Markets.
Mr. Ambani also announced that the phone would be made available effectively 'free of cost'. The users will have to deposit Rs. 1500 with Jio which would be refunded completely after a span of 3 years. There were rumors that Reliance would charge Rs. 500 per unit. However the new pricing plan is likely to attract a lot of consumers to Jio network through JioPhone.
Do you think we are witnessing another disruption in connectivity in India? Let us know.
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