JIO AND GOOGLE ANNOUNCE "JIOPHONE NEXT"

 

Mukesh Ambani announced the launch of much awaited "JioPhone Next", another affordable smartphone developed jointly by Reliance Jio and Google. The announcement came during the Reliance Industries Annual General Meeting (AGM) on 24th June 2021, the Thursday. The phone is proposed to be available in the Indian market starting September 10, 2021.

Ambani presented the images of JioPhone Next and said that it will be a full-feature smartphone, the most affordable in the market, but did not disclose the planned price range. Some of the phone’s features include voice assistant, automatic read-aloud of screen text, language translation and smart camera with augmented reality filters.

Mukesh Ambani at the AGM said, "India still has nearly 300 million mobile users who are unable to escape from inefficient and exorbitant 2G services, because even a basic 4G smartphone remains unaffordable for these users. Last year, Sundar and I had talked about Google and Jio co-developing a next-generation, feature-rich, but extremely affordable smartphone."  

"JioPhone Next is powered by an extremely optimized version of the Android operating system that has been jointly developed by Jio and Google, specially for the Indian market," said Mukesh Ambani at the virtual AGM. He further added, "This is a testimony to a global technology giant, and a national technology champion, working together to make truly a breakthrough product that can be first introduced in India, and then taken to the rest of the world."

 Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet spoke about the joint partnership of Reliance Jio and Google and said: "JioPhone Next is powered by an optimized version of Android OS jointly developed by Jio and Google. It is ultra-affordable and packs cutting-edge features."

Pichai added that Google's vision with the Jio partnership was to bring affordable access to information for Indians. "Next steps in this vision start with a new, affordable, Jio smartphone, created with Google. It is built for India and it will open up new possibilities for millions of new users who will experience the internet for first time." Mr. Pichai also spoke about the partnership of both companies on 5G network technology. He said "A new 5G partnership between Google Cloud and Jio will help more than a billion Indians connect to a faster internet, support businesses in digital transformation and lay foundation for next phase of India’s digitization".

During the AGM, Ambani also talked about his company's fixed broadband operator JioFiber. "With a cumulative base of 3 million active home and business users, JioFiber has become the largest and the fastest-growing fixed broadband operator in India," Ambani said.

 "We are proud to play a part in India’s next wave of technological innovation. Helping to connect 1.3 billion Indians to the opportunities the internet creates is meaningful to us at Google – and certainly to me personally," Pichai added.

Jio Freedom Plans - New Prepaid Jio Plans

Jio has recently introduced 5 new prepaid recharge plans with no daily data limit or fair usage policy (FUP restrictions along with unlimited call benefits. These new plans are bundled under a new offer titled "JIO FREEDOM PLANS - Freedom from Daily Data Limit". One can find these new Jio prepaid plans under the ‘No Daily Limit’ section.

The new plans will be suitable for those customers who do not want to buy data vouchers for extra data and want to use unlimited data on any day without any restrictions.
 
All the new prepaid plans from Jio offer unlimited voice calling to any network, 100 SMS per day and free access to most commonly used Jio apps such as JioTV, JioCinema, JioNews, JioSecurity and JioCloud.
 
The lowest among the newly introduced plans is Rs 127 Jio prepaid plan which gives users 12GB of total 4G high speed data and comes with a validity period of 15 days.
 
The next highest plan is Rs 247 plan which gives users 25GB of total 4G high speed data and comes with a validity period of 30 days. The Rs 447 Jio prepaid plan gives 50GB of total data and the plan comes with a validity period of 60 days.
 
The company even launched a Rs 597 recharge plan which provides a total of 75GB high speed data valid for 90 days. The last and highest of all is Rs 2,397 Jio prepaid plan comes with 365GB of total data valid for 365 days.
 

JIO COULD SOON LAUNCH ITS BUDGET LAPTOP - JIOBOOK

 Jio had already revealed its plans about introducing a budget laptop ( an initiative similar to that of JioPhone) last year, but owing to the success of previous Jio's initiatives and widespread demand for budget and affordable laptops for rural students for online classes, Jio could be speeding up its launch as per few online reports.

 The planned laptop would provide 4G LTE support and is contemplated to be called "JioBook". Though exact specifications of JioBook are not available, few speculations are already in air which will be discussed below.

 

The new affordable laptop could be using Android Operating system and most of the Jio applications which are avaialble on the Jio Phone will be available in this laptop.

It is also speculated that Jio is working along with BlueBank Communication technology, a china based tech firm which develps third party softwares.

 

As per the report from XDA Developers, the planned Jio Book prototype is currently using Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 665 (sm6125), an 11nm chipset that was announced in early 2019. The chipset features a built-in 4G LTE modem called "Snapdragon X12". This feature will allow JioBook to provide cellular connectivity to Reliance Jio’s expansive 4G network. As per few leaked speculative images, the laptop was of small-to-mid size, sleek black in colour.

 

Jio Book has been said to have tested in various iterations and two models were revealed by the report-- the first one with a 2GB of LPDDR4X RAM paired with 32GB of eMMC storage and the second one with a 4GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 64GB of eMMC 5.1 storage. The design aspects are expected to be completed before Jun 2021 and most are speculating that new product will be launched in September 2021.

 

Coming to the connectivity options, the laptop may feature a mini HDMI connector for video output, support for WiFi over 2.4 and 5GHz frequencies, Bluetooth, a three-axis accelerometer, and a Qualcomm audio chip. Last year, Jio partnered with Google to work on low-cost Android smartphones. The phones which will be bundled by data packs are speculated to launch in the first quarter of 2021. The move came after Google invested Rs 33,737 crore in Jio Platforms for a 7.7 per cent stake, last year.

 

If these speculations are to be true, India's rural population, especially rural students and poor parents could now afford a 4G enable laptop. It will also give direct boost to business sector in rural areas of India. We will get a clear picture in around 6 months from now.