Reliance Jio announced the JioPhone Next, the company’s ultra-affordable Android smartphone in partnership with Google, back in June. It was supposed to be available in market from Ganesh Chaturthi, 10th September, but the launch got pushed to Diwali due to chip shortage. Today the company has announced that the smartphone will run Pragati OS, powered by Android.
Jio said that the Pragati OS has been built specifically for India and has been engineered by best minds at Jio and Google with an objective to bring Pragati (progress) for all, while offering truly seamless experience at affordable cost.
It will come with a voice assistant, automatic read-aloud, language translation for any on-screen text, easy and smart camera with built-in custom AR filters designed for India, and it will come preloaded with Jio and Google Apps.
The company also confirmed that the JioPhone Next will be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon SoC, which it says will offer optimized connectivity and location technologies along with optimizations in device performance, audio and battery.
Jio has also confirmed that the JioPhone Next is Made in India at factories in Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh and Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu through a partnership with Neolync Solutions Private Limited. Neolync is one of the companies that got Department of Telecom (DoT) approval for production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme to get an investment of Rs. 3,345 crore over the next four-and-a-half years. Reliance has invested Rs. 20 crore in the company.
Based on earlier rumours, the smartphone will feature an 5.5-inch HD+ (1440 x 720 pixels) resolution screen, 1.3 GHz quad-core Qualcomm 215 Mobile Platform with support for Dual-SIM Dual 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.2, 13MP OmniVision OV13B10 rear camera sensor and a 8MP front camera with GalaxyCore GC8034W sensor.
We should know more details about the JioPhone Next, including the price, when the smartphone goes official in the first week of November. You can check out more details in the JioPhone Next promo video.