Jio Phone first look…

Reliance Jio introduced Jio Phone at the annual general meeting this year. Jio Phone created a huge stir in the market as soon as it was launched. The most interesting thing about this feature phone equipped with 4G and Voice over LTE feature is that the phone is effectively free. However, you will have to pay Rs 1,500 as a security deposit to buy it. Reliance started pre-booking of Jio Phone in the month of August. The delivery of the handset was promised to start from September 21. Gadgets 360 has finally got a chance to use Jio Phone and at first glance, this is what we found this phone…

After reviewing many smartphones, Jio Phone gives a very different feeling. It is a feature phone and comes with a standard candy bar design. It is small and comfortable to hold. Your thumb will easily reach any key on the keypad. Considering the price of Rs 1,500, we would say that the build quality of this phone is good. Due to the curved edges, it has a good grip in the hands. And the weight is also not too much.

The screen is 2.4 inches and has a resolution of 240×320 pixels. There are two function buttons below the screen. There is a large clickable D-pad, call and disconnect buttons and a number pad. The quality of plastic used in the phone is good. The buttons give good feedback when clicked. With Jio Phone you will remain connected to the Jio network. You will get the facility of unlimited calls and SMS.

There is a 2 megapixel camera on the back and a loudspeaker. There is a VGA camera on the front panel. The device uses a micro-USB port for charging. A travel charger is also available in the box. A 3.5 mm headphone socket is also provided in it. The back cover of the Jio phone comes out. You will be able to see the 2000 mAh removable battery. There is a nano SIM slot and a card up to 128 GB can be used in the microSD card slot. The Jio phone uses a dual core processor. Its RAM is 512 MB and the inbuilt storage is 4 GB.

Jio Phone runs on KaiOS, a new mobile operating system. You will find easily recognizable app icons in a grid layout. Navigation is easy with the help of the D-pad. You can also use each button on the D-pad as a shortcut to launch selected apps. Basic functions like calling are very fast. You will be able to make calls on VoLTE network in a jiffy. If you are thinking of using the free data that comes with this phone every day, then let us tell you that there is no hotspot feature in Jio Phone.

The phone supports 4G and automatically connects to the Reliance Jio network. We also tried streaming a song on the JioMusic app and it worked fine. We also tried the JioCinema and JioTV apps and found that streaming was great on 4G networks. We were able to stream a full movie on the phone. You have a lot of viewing options, but the screen on the Jio Phone is not made for watching videos. For one, the size is small and the viewing angles are also very poor.

The Jio Phone has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth along with geolocation and NFC. There are several quick toggles that can be used from the main screen. The battery is good. We used both the cameras of the phone. We found that if your hands are not steady, the photos will come out blurry. The resolution of the photo is 1600×1200, while the video recording is done at 320×240 pixels. With the front camera, you will be able to take photos with a resolution of 640×480 pixels. We will discuss all these aspects in detail in the Jio Phone review.

After about a day with the Jio Phone, we can say that the battery life is good and the user interface is easy to understand. Currently, the free Jio Phone is being tested. We will come up with a review soon.