Here’s how to pre-book the Reliance JioPhone via SMS

NEW DELHI: We are just days away from the official bookings of Reliance Jio's 4G VoLTE feature phone, JioPhone. The phone will be available for pre-bookings from August 24th onwards. The smartphone will be available for pre-boolings both online and offline from this date. According to the company, the smartphone will be available on first-come-first-serve basis. JioPhone is expected to hit market by September. 

Interested buyers can pre-book the phone at all Reliance Jio stores and at the company's authorised Jio stores across the country. JioPhone can also be pre-booked using the company's MyJio app. This facility is for the company's existing subscribers. There's also an option to pre-book the device by sending an SMS. Here's how you can do it:

To pre-book JioPhone, you just have to send an SMS by typing in JP<>your area PIN code<>Jio Store code near your locality and send it to 7021170211. 

The Reliance JioPhone comes at an "effective" price of Rs 0. The company is though will be taking a refundable security deposit Rs 1500 to avoid potential misuse of the device. The amount will be refunded after a minimum period of three years.

The Jio Phone runs on VoLTE network and comes with a host of pre-installed services such as JioTV and JioCinema apps. The device also has its own digital assistant along with the support for voice commands. It also comes with support for 24 Indian languages. Reliance says that users can long press on the '5' key to directly call their near and dear ones. Furthermore, the company will bring NFC feature on Jio-branded phones as well later this year. The feature will arrive as part of a software update.

Reliance Jio Phone also supports voice commands. It includes support for 22 Indian languages. Furthermore, the company has also promised to add NFC payment support to JioPhone later this year. JioPhone is said to run on KAI OS, which is a forked OS version of the Firefox OS. For now, it doesn't offer support for WhatsApp.

Earlier this week, the company has started the beta testing of the device. The company has made the phone available to some of its employees for testing and report any software or hardware glitches that they encounter while using the phone.

Reliance Group chairman Mukesh Ambani unveiled the VoLTE feature phone at the company's annual general meeting on July 21.