A major part of the announcements revolving around Reliance Jio, made on July 5 during the Reliance Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Mumbai, was the next version of the JioPhone. To recall, the company had introduced the JioPhone at last year's Reliance AGM as a 4G enabled feature phone, which was also dubbed as "India ka smartphone" at the time. A year on, Mukesh D. Ambani has now revealed its successor as the JioPhone 2, a higher-end variant with a QWERTY keypad and a horizontal viewing display. What's more, the new smart feature phone also comes with dual-SIM connectivity. The JioPhone 2 will be available for purchase starting August 15 at a price of Rs 2,999.
As for what the JioPhone 2 has to offer to its users, the device will come with a 2.4-inch QVGA display placed on top of a QWERTY keypad that comes with a 4-way navigation key. It will run on the same KaiOS as the JioPhone and will also support Facebook, YouTube as well as WhatsApp. As for its memory, the JioPhone 2 will come with a 512MB RAM and a 4GB internal storage, which will further be expandable up to 128GB using an external microSD. The device is backed by a 2000 mAh battery and comes with connectivity options including VoLTE, VoWiFi, FM, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, NFC and more. As for its optics, the JioPhone 2 will come with a 2-megapixel camera at the back and a VGA camera at the front.
While the JioPhone 2 might not be the first qwerty feature phone in the country, it certainly will be a major disruptor for the phone market in this budget, given its features as well as all the Jio-exclusive benefits that will be available with the device. Here is a list of devices which will seemingly feel get affected once the JioPhone 2 enters the market.
Micromax Bharat 1
Micromax had come up with its Bharat 1 just after the launch of the JioPhone. While the device competed with the JioPhone head to head for an entire year, the JioPhone 2 is enough to ditch the competition from the Micromax-manufactured handset. The successive variants of the Micromax Bharat series run on the Google Android OS and hence are not in the competing segment anymore.
Also read: Top 5 Smartphones in July 2018 Priced Under Rs 10,000
Nokia 3310 (4G)
HMD Global re-introduced the iconic Nokia handset, Nokia 3310, last year and this time, with 4G support. Measuring 115.6x51.0x12.8 mm and weighing almost 80 grams, the new Nokia 3310 also comes wiht Dual SIM connectivity and is backed by a 1200 mAh battery. A major limitation of the smartphone is that it doesn't support WhatsApp, Facebook or YouTube, which Reliance Jio has now also introduced on the JioPhone, let alone the JioPhone 2 which will comes with these out-of-the-box.
Nokia 8810 (4G)
The story continues with another Nokia offering, which, although has an all-too-appealing design for the budget range, does not come with support for any of these social apps. What's more, the device is more than twice the price of the JioPhone 2.
Also read: Oppo Find X India Launch Expected on July 12
Samsung Metro XL
Samsung has been a strong player in the feature phone market and one competent offering from the company comes as the Samsung Metro XL. The device is priced just a notch higher than the JioPhone 2 and has good amount of features to offer like an LED flash, 2MP front camera and more. Where it does fall behind the JioPhone 2 though is the absence of a QWERTY keypad, sticking to the out-of-date numeric keypad and of course there is no WhatsApp on this one either.
BlackBerry 9720
This one is the only competitor to the JioPhone 2 in the list which actually comes with a QWERTY keypad. The device runs on BlackBerry's own BlackBerry v7.1 operating system and comes wiht a 5-megapixel camera at the back. The downside? There is no camera at the front on this one and it is priced a good Rs 2,000 higher than the JioPhone 2.
(Disclaimer: News18.com is part of Network18 Media & Investment Limited which is owned by Reliance Industries Limited that also owns Reliance Jio)
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