Multiple rumours suggest that Reliance Jio[1] will unveil an affordable Lyf-branded feature phone with advanced functionality at its upcoming AGM next week. Now, more details and even photos of the purported Jio 4G VoLTE phone[2] have popped up online. For starters, the feature phone will of course be 4G-capable and support VoLTE, but it will also shown to support dual SIM cards and tethering, allowing it to function as a Wi-Fi hotspot. The Lyf-branded Reliance Jio 4G feature phone is also tipped to have a 2.4-inch colour screen, 512MB of RAM, 4GB of storage, a microSD card slot, a 2-megapixel rear camera and VGA front camera for video calling. The battery capacity is supposedly 2000mAh, but details of the processor are unknown, except that it could be a dual-core model clocked at 1.2GHz.
The rumoured 4G VoLTE Jio feature phone's[3] operating system is reportedly going to be a custom version of the HTML5-based FirefoxOS called KaiOS, and there will be an app store called KaiOS Plus. The most ambitious feature would be an integrated voice assistant which supports Indian languages. Reliance Jio apps including Jio TV, Jio Cinema, Jio Music and MyJio will apparently be supported.
With an affordable feature phone, Reliance Jio could target millions of Indian 2G and 3G users who cannot afford smartphones. Previous rumours[4] have suggested that the company will also roll out new tariff plans to suit feature phone users.
In related news, investigations into the leak of Reliance Jio's user database continue[5]. A resident of Sujangarh in Rajasthan, said to be a college computer science dropout, has been arrested. He is in the custody of the Navi Mumbai Police, which is working with the Maharashtra...