Let’s get started with the looks. Apologies up front for the quality of the shots, but you can clearly see that the Jio 4G VoLTE phone is branded as Lyf, which is Jio’s sister-brand. The phone has a typical candy bar design with a 2.4-inch color screen on top and dual-language keypad at the bottom. There is a dedicated key for Torchlight (who wouldn’t want one?) flanked by the keys to receive and cut calls. The back seems to have a textured finish with a 2-megapixel camera on top.
While we are not sure which processor is powering this 4G VoLTE feature phone from Lyf, we do know that it comes with either 512MB of RAM along with 4GB of internal storage. It also supports microSD card up to 128GB which isn’t a standard amongst feature phones. Although Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 205 platform specifically for 4G VoLTE phones, we expect this one to be running a Spreadtrum processor (not completely sure about that). It’s a dual-sim device with one of the SIMs being nano-SIM.
The highlight of this phone will be the ability to run some Jio apps like Jio TV, Jio Cinema etc out of the box, despite being a feature phone. Both the app and the device are heavily optimized to run high intensive tasks like video streaming over 4G. The phone appears to be running on KAI OS which apparently is a forked version of Firefox OS (based on HTML5), developed by a firm with the same name in Hong Kong. As per our source, the phone has a dedicated app store called KaiOS Plus (which will probably be rebranded a Jio Store or something) with Facebook and Jio apps listed there. We can expect support for other popular apps like WhatsApp.
Also, it’s very rare to see the support for video calling, GPS, Bluetooth 4.1 and USB tethering on a feature phone. Moreover, it comes with an in-built Voice Assistant with support for Indian languages. The smart voice assistant can answer questions like current weather, solving mathematical equations etc. How cool is that?
Reliance Jio Lyf 4G VoLTE feature phone specifications
Screen size: 2.4-inch Form factor: Bar with T9 keypad and 4-way Navkey Connectivity : Cat 4 LTE Band 3,5,40 OS: KAI OS RAM: 512 MB Flash: 4GB SD Card: 128 GB SIM: Dual SIM (mini SIM + nano SIM) Front Camera: VGA Rear Camera: 2MP Battery: Li-ion 3.7V 2000 mAh Bluetooth: 4.1 + BLE FM Radio: Integrated Audio: 2030 or equivalent loud mono speaker USB Tethering support (App specific) MTP Support for data transfer Wi-Fi Support for VoWiFi and data offload (No Wi-Fi tethering/HotSpot) GPS Support MIMO (Dual antenna for receiver diversity) PIMS and standard apps (Contacts, Messages, Setting, Camera, Photos, Music, Calendar, FM, Browser, Video, File Manager, Notes, Calculator, Clock, Games etc.) FOTA and Subsidy Lock VoLTE and Video Calling VoWiFi Support HTML5 platform support with Audio/Video tags to run Jio HTML5 apps and popular third-party HTML5 apps. Platform adaptation for Native Services integration with HTML5 Indian regional language support (14 scripts with 22 Indian official languages) SAR value: 1.215W/kg
As you can see, the connectivity options include just three LTE bands – Band 3, 5 and 40 and no support for 2G and 3G bands. That will ensure that the phone works only with Reliance Jio. But with the expected price of Rs 1,499, the Jio 4G VoLTE feature phone will be a game changer. Expect Jio to sweeten up the deal by bundling some freebies along with the phone. Stay tuned for more details including the videos of the Jio 4G feature phone.
Thank you, Anonymous tipster!
