JioPhone first impressions: Loaded with goodies and high speed internet, at lowest of prices

Almost a month after it went up for pre-orders in August, the Reliance JioPhone is reaching customers. Unlike other feature phones, this smart-feature-phone comes with 4G and supports VoLTE (lifetime free) technology and is priced at Rs 1,500 that is refundable after three years.

Unsurprisingly, it drew a lot of attention as Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio claimed it registered a whopping 6 million bookings in the three-day pre-order period.

I, too, was able to lay my hands on the popular phone, and here are my first impressions. Unlike the Freedom 251, the Reliance JioPhone is fortunately not a gimmick. It’s real, makes sense and works. Of course, it’s not perfect yet, but we should keep our expectations realistic considering the price tag.

At first glance, you could mistake JioPhone for any other feature phone available in the market. It has a standard candybar design and features an alphanumeric keypad and a four-way navigation trackpad at the centre. It also has a USB port and a 3.5 mm audio jack, located at the base while the top has a LED flashlight. The display is 2.4-inch QVGA.

It features a 2-megapixel rear camera and a VGA front-facing camera. It is a single-SIM phone, and supports additional storage up to 128GB via a microSD card. It has a removable battery, which the company claims delivers up to 15 days of backup.

But if you’re able to move past the elementary design and feature phone-like specifications, the JioPhone has a lot to offer. The star of the JioPhone is the suite of apps on-board. For multimedia enthusiasts, it comes preloaded with apps like JioCinema and JioTV. I streamed a few live channels using the cellular network, and it worked smoothly. The videos/live content has been very well upscaled for a lower-resolution screen. The audio quality, in my opinion, was satisfactory.

There’s also an app store for games, optimised for the feature phone. I saw a few racing games on the app store. I am hoping there’s a classic Snake game, but to be honest, I didn’t spot it.

The JioPhone runs on KaiOS, which is based on Linux operating system. During my brief encounter with the phone, the navigation seemed fairly easy to get started and good enough for a Rs 1,500 phone. I did try out the voice commands, which can be accessed by long pressing the centre button in the trackpad. Besides making calls to a contact, the voice recognition didn’t really work well. But, I will give it the benefit of doubt as it might not be the final device.