Reliance Jio has launched it’s messenger app Jio Chat and is now available on Google Play store. It is currently available on Android and iOS devices. The launch of Jio Chat app comes at an interesting time because the Net Neutrality debate is currently at the peak now, and features offered by apps like Jio Chat are at the centre of all the Net Neutrality discussions.
The Jio Chat app has everything you would expect from a mobile messenger app along with number of extra bells and whistles. Let us look at each of the features.
The Jio Chat app can be installed and used on any mobile network and on any mobile number, you just need to have a working WiFi, 3G or 2G connection. The app activation happens on SMS, and once activated you can start using the app.
Like most of it’s competitors, Jio Chat goes beyond just instant messaging – the app offers free SMS, free app to app voice and video calls. Interestingly, the Jio Chat app has bundled a dialer and is available readily through a separate tab. The app will first see if it is a Jio Chat user, if not, it will advice the user that the call is being made on the cellular network and charges will apply.
The app also provides a “Contacts View” through which you can invite other users to Jio Chat. Interestingly, the app provides free 100 SMSes per month for non Jio Chat numbers.
Among other features, Jio chat offers good privacy features, which allows users to decide whether they want to show their “last seen” timing or geo-location to others or not. The setting can only be changed once in every 24 hours. Jio chat users can also block certain contacts with whom they do not want to communicate. So, on privacy front, Jio Chat seems to score quite highly.
The app has number of other features including great collection of Emoji’s and free stickers that should help bring some fun to your chat messages. Users can share pictures, share videos, share contacts, share location, share doodle or any kind of files for that matter.
Jio Chat is definitely one of feature-rich chat apps out there!
Jio Chat Offers Excellent Voice Calls
In our testing the app, what really stood out was the quality of voice calls made over Jio Chat. We found that on 3G and Wifi, the call quality was excellent, probably even better than normal cellular calls. This was quite surprising to us, because in comparison, we found the call quality on even WhatsApp and other IM apps to be quite sub-standard.
One can probably say that Jio Chat has much lesser users at this point of time, but even then, they seems to have got the technology behind VOIP voice calls and video calls quite right. The app goes beyond one-to-one calling and also offers audio and video group conferencing calls.
Monetization
WhatsApp has dedicated brand tabs on the app where users can click on various brands and follow the buzz. This is how Jio chat plans to monetize their app. They seem to have tied up with various brands to showcase various events, news and buzz about them.
Whats Not Good?
While we quite like the features of Jio Chat, we were put-off by the fact that the app does utilize lot of CPU resources, much more than what an IM app should generally use. On our OnePlus handset it continually used over 20% of CPU resources. On this front, Jio Chat definitely needs an improvement.
Go ahead, download the app, and let us know what you feel…