At its 41st Annual General Meeting earlier today, Reliance Industries announced the JioPhone 2, the second-generation feature phone. JioPhone has broken all records to become the best-selling feature phone in the country, beating competition from established incumbents, Samsung, Nokia and Micromax.
JioPhone 2 Specs and Features
The JioPhone 2 comes with a number of changes and improvements, with the most striking change being the QWERTY keypad like older BlackBerry devices. In addition, it also borrows its predecessor’s 4-way navigation key and the dedicated voice command button to summon the Hello Jio voice assistant.
It features a 2.4-inch QVGA display (320×240 pixels), and comes with 512MB of RAM and 4GB of internal storage that can be expanded by up to 128GB via a SD card. The JioPhone 2 also packs a 2MP camera on the back and a 0.3MP front camera for selfies. The device runs KaiOS, supports FM radio and carries a 2,000mAh battery. It also offers native support for 24 Indian languages, and comes preloaded WhatsApp, Facebook and YouTube, among other Jio apps.
Connectivity options include Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth, but it also comes with an NFC chip, possibly to facilitate mobile payments. Cellular connectivity includes support for VoLTE, as well as LTE Cat4 (150 Mbps download, 50 Mbps upload) on Band 2, 5 and 40. It also supports 2G on 900 and 1,800MHz frequencies.
JioPhone 2 Price and Availability
The Jio Phone 2 will be available for purchase in India from August 15 at Rs 2,999, which is twice as much as the original JioPhone was launched for. However, as part of the company’s Monsoon’s Hungama Offer, you can exchange any other feature phone for the first-gen JioPhone by paying just Rs. 501.
