Reliance Jio has single-handedly changed the Indian telecom market since its launch last year. After offering free voice calls and data at throwaway prices, the company’s announcement today is also going to create a stir in India. Reliance Jio will now be offering a feature phone in India for free.
Despite rapid smartphone penetration in India, millions of people in India continue to use a feature phone. To help get them on the 4G bandwagon, Reliance Jio will be offering its JioPhone to them for free. There’s a slight catch though but the sheer amount of benefits bundled with the phone more than makes up for it.
JioPhone Price
One can get their hands on the JioPhone after making a payment of Rs 1500. This amount is refundable after a period of 3 years. The company is taking this security deposit to ensure that there is no misuse of the free phone. After 3 years, you can simply return your JioPhone to Reliance to get back your security deposit.
With JioPhone, Reliance is offering free voice calls and SMS for all users without even doing any recharge. However, for data access, JioPhone users will have to do a recharge of Rs 153/month. This would provide them with unlimited 4G data albeit with a cap of 500MB per day which effectively means you are 15GB of data per month. There will be smaller recharge packs of Rs 24 and Rs 54 also available with two-day and one-week validity.
JioPhone Specs and Features
As for the JioPhone itself, it features a 2.4-inch QVGA display, an SD card slot, FM radio, torch, and a basic 2MP camera at its rear. The handset runs on KaiOS, a variation of Firefox OS, and supports 22 regional languages. Despite being a feature phone, the handset also comes with NFC which could come in handy when NFC payments become commonplace in India. It also comes with voice recognition and voice command support.
As if this was not already impressive enough, the JiioPhone will also come with an optional cable using which one can mirror their phone’s screen to their TV. This works even with older CRT TVs so this is an impressive feat from Reliance. By mirroring their phone to their TV, JioPhone users would be able to watch content from JioTV and Jio Cinema on their TV.
However, to mirror content from their JioPhone to TV, JioPhone owners will have to subscribe to the company’s De Dhana Dhan plan which starts from Rs 309/month.
JioPhone Availability
The JioPhone will go up for pre-order from August 24th across all Reliance stores and start shipping from September. Reliance will soon start producing 5 million units of the phone per week in India to meet its impending demand as well. It will be available for selected users for beta testing from August 15th as well.
