JioPhone Next To Launch On Diwali At INR 6,499

Jointly designed by Jio and Google, the JioPhone Next’s is slated for a Diwali release at a price of INR 6,499. The company has announced a financing plan which would require upfront payment of INR 1,999 and the rest paid via easy EMI over 18/24 months.

Mukesh D Ambani, Chairman & Managing Director, Reliance Industries said, “ I have always been a firm believer in the power of the Digital Revolution to enrich, enable and empower the lives of 1.35 billion Indians. We have done it in the past with connectivity. Now we are enabling it again with a smartphone device.”

Consumers can get the phone by either registering their interest online or through a Jio retail outlet. The specifications of the phone will remain the same as those revealed in a leak earlier.

The JioPhone Next will be built on Qualcomm’s QM215 platform, and the quad-core CPU will clock speeds up to 1.3GHz. The new phone will have a 720×1440 sized screen with a 320 DPI pixel density. The phone will come with 2 GB RAM and 32 GB inbuilt storage, which is expandable. It will come with a 3500 mAH battery, which is respectable for a phone built on a budget SOC platform. 

The 5.45 inch screen will have Corning Gorilla Glass 3 with a fingerprint-resistant coating. The only major gripe for its price point is that it will have a micro USB port instead of USB C, which most new phones are releasing with. 

The phone will have a 13MP rear camera and an 8mp rear camera. If phones Google has worked on in the past are a clue, the JioPhone might have budget sensors and glass with the software image processing left to do the heavy lifting.

The phone runs on an android-based custom OS, Pragati OS. The OS is custom-developed for an Indian audience by Google and Jio. The phone is optimised to run some of Google’s popular features including Google Lens and Google Translate.

Update | 30 October | 10:08 PM

Story updated to include phone’s pricing with clarity.