Reliance Jio Android Go Smartphone Coming Soon–What About Jio Phone Then?

After successful launch of low cost Jio Phone, Reliance Jio is planning for a low cost Android Go 4G VoLTE smartphone. Reliance Jio already has a wide range of Lyf branded Jio 4G smartphones available in the market, but the company has now has partnered with Taiwanese chipset maker MediaTek for a dirt-cheap 4G smartphone, a move aimed at adding more subscribers to their network.

Last month Google unveiled their ambitious Android Oreo Go project at the I/O event for the smartphones which have 1GB of RAM or less. The Android Oreo phones will primarily be the low cost 4G smartphones with a toned down OS and slimmed apps. The Android Go smartphones will play an important role in expansion of internet adoption in markets of developing countries like India.

The Low-Cost Jio 4G Smartphone

Jio will have a similar approach to what it did for the Jio Phone, which is available at an effective price of Rs. 0, and Jio is now planning to offer a smartphone bundled with a Reliance Jio SIM card, which aims at bringing the costs to unseen levels for such a smart device.

It is rumoured that Reliance will soon be placing orders for millions of units for the upcoming 4G smartphone, and the company will subsidize the smartphones for a mass uptake, and will most likely take the same approach like the Jio Phone for their Android Go smartphone.

The Competition

Already Airtel and Vodafone have such bundled 4G smartphones, where the telecom operators have tied up with smartphone makers to bring prices down of the 4G devices to as low as under Rs. 1,500 through several cashback offers. But, the new low cost Jio Go phone is expected to go even below this price bracket.

Not only Jio, but a number of domestic and Chinese smartphone manufacturers are planning to bring some Android Go based affordable smartphones to the Indian market.

Domestic handset maker Micromax has already announced their Android Go Oreo powered smartphone – Bharat One – which will be launching in the coming few weeks. The Indian smartphone company is now focussed on bringing more premium features to the low cost smartphones like face unlock, 18:9 widescreen display and dual 4G VoLTE support on some entry and mid level smartphones in India.

The Jio Mission

The new initiative by Jio aims to fulfill the target of making smartphone accessible to 500 million of the feature phone users in the country, and the low cost Jio Android Go smartphone will help feature phone users to migrate to smartphones.

The Jio Phone has already taken up a 27% share of the feature phone market within six months of the launch, and has shipped over 15 million devices in the October-December period, and outpaced leader Samsung in the feature phone segment.

The Google Support

Google have claimed that the Android Go will have smaller and better apps and a slimmer OS, which will halve the amount of storage taken up by the OS by default on a new device.

Android Go will come with customised apps that can easily run on Smartphones with lower specifications. The newly launched Datally app among other Go apps like Files Go, Mail go will come pre-installed on Android Go devices which will keep a track of cellular data.

MediaTek will work with Google for the low-cost Jio smartphone to offer certified and CTS-compliant Android builds with Google Mobile Services to ensure a quality Android Go experience on the upcoming Jio smartphone!