Exclusive Look At Reliance LYF Smartphones – EARTH 1, WATER 1 & 2

Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director at Reliance Industries, recently unveiled its 4G services, under Reliance Jio, through a huge launch in Mumbai. Reliance Jio 4G services are currently only available to its employees, but there will be a full fledged launch to everyone in March-April 2016 and we expect it to do better than any other 4G service present in the country. Once the testing phase is over, you can expect 4G services in your city with complete coverage as promised.

Reliance Jio is prepping up for the launch of its new range of 4G ready smartphones, LYF, to compete with the smartphones out there currently lacking a bundled data plan. Three smartphones, LYF Earth 1, LYF Water 1 and LYF Water 2 will be sold in India online as well as offline stores, including Reliance Digital. The smartphones have been priced between Rs 14,690 and Rs 23,990 and will compete in the mid-range smartphone segment.

The handsets are dual-sim compatible, which means you can plug in your other network sim card for use as well along with the Reliance Jio sim. The smartphones are equipped to make Internet-based calls like Voice over LTE (VoLTE), Voice over Wi-Fi (VoWi-FI), High Definition Voice and High Definition Video calling on Reliance Jio Infocomm network.

What will come bundled with the smartphones?

Since Reliance is going all out with its new set of smartphones, which are not cheap to be honest, there must be a value proposition to attract customers…And there is!

The three smartphones will come bundled with 50GB of free 4G data, which is more than enough for any smartphone user these days. 5,000 minutes of free talk time on own 4G network and 5,000 free SMS will also be on offer along with free data.

Adding up costs per 1GB of data, 1 SMS and 1 minute call will give you a figure high enough for you to consider Reliance Jio above the competition. These services will be launched in thirteen cities for now, namely Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chandigarh, Chennai, Bangalore, Baroda, Jaipur, Indore, Kochi, Hyderabad, Pune and Patna. There is no priority list for Reliance Jio yet, so you’ll have to wait a while to avail these offers since the expected launch date is still two months away, unless launcher earlier.

About the smartphones

All the three handsets have been listed on Reliance Jio’s website ahead of the official 4G launch, which gives us more confidence in saying that 4G services will be rolled out sooner than later. The cheaper smartphones of the three, LYF Water 1 and LYF Water 2 have been priced at Rs 14,999 and Rs 14,690 respectively, while the expensive one LYF Earth 1 has been priced at Rs 23,990.

LYF Water 1 comes with a 5-inch Full HD display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 chipset coupled with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. It also have a memory slot to expand the storage available. There is a 13MP shooter at the back with a 5MP front camera. It boasts of a large 2600 mAh battery and comes with an outdated Android Lollipop 5.1. As listed on the website, it is available in two colours, black and white.

LYF Water 2 is the cheapest of the lot, and certainly packs a similar punch as that of LYF Water 1. The only places is falls short is the display at 5-inch 1280 x 720p, which seems quite outdated at the time when technology is rapidly moving to 8K displays.It comes with a slightly smaller battery size at 2400 mAh, while rest of the specifications are same as Water 1. Somehow it does not make sense to have smartphones with a price difference of just Rs 300 with a relatively larger difference in specifications being the deciding factor.

Lastly, LYF Earth 1 is definitely a lot more expensive than the above two budget smartphones. As expected, the handset offers 5.5-inch Full HD AMOLED display powered by Snapdragon 615 processor, coupled with 3GB of RAM and 32GB internal storage. There is a microSD card slot available to expand the storage further. The primary camera features 13MP shooter along with a 2MP shooter. The camera module comes with PureCel technology which allows Re-Focus, Fast Focus, Foregrounder and Optizoom. The front camera is tagged at 5MP for selfies. The phone is powered by 3500 mAh battery and comes with the outdated Android Lollipop 5.1.

The smartphones might not look a very attractive in terms of features, but then if you think about the added costs of a network, the deal seems very sweet with nearly unlimited data and calling and messaging packs.

Since they have only been listed on the website, there is still no information about the official launch or availability to the public. There are other series in LYF brand which will also be seen in the coming months, to capture every niche segment in the market. Keep a close watch on this space for more news on Reliance Jio 4G services.

LYF VoLTE HD Voice Calling

Reliance Jio’s Voice on LTE is been much talked about right now. The HD voice calls are supposed to be much superior than normal mobile calls available on other networks. Here is a look at various features and advantages of LYF VoLTE.

And interestingly, Jio Voice calls can be made from other networks as well!