JIO Phone Review: Price, Specifications & Features
Here is my honest, hands-on review of the JIO Phone
My JIO Phone got delivered today, and I am disappointed with it, but it still has a few features that still make this phone worth the buy.
Here is my honest, hands-on review of the JIO Phone:
Hardware
The JIO Phone is manufactured by Lyf, which is the main reason for my disappointment. It has a 2.4 inches QVGA display which is quite good for a feature phone. It has a removable battery of 2000 mAh, which would have been good enough for a feature phone, but the JIO phone is an exception. Its color display, music player, 4G LTE chipset, and video streaming will cause the battery to drain within a day.
The Jio Phone has a single SIM slot and 128 GB expandable memory card, and a torch. It also has NFC for making payments with the JioPay app. Surprisingly it also has GPS, Bluetooth 4.1, and WiFi as well.
The JIO phone does have some excellent features. It has a dual camera, which is OK quality for this price range. Both cameras can be used for taking pictures and recording videos. The front camera can be used for video calls and works only with Jio Phones and the JioVideoCall app devices installed. The Jio Phone cannot make or receive direct video calls.
The device has 1 GB of storage data and 1 GB of app storage which I think is for storing the cache of the streaming videos and music; otherwise, the device does not need 1 GB storage for the few apps the phone has in its app store.
Software
The JIOStore currently only has JIO apps, including JioVideoCall, JioCinema, MyJio, Jio Xpress News, JioPay, JioMusic, JioTV, and JioGames. On the 2nd day after the device’s release, the Jio phone got an automatic update which fixed the abovementioned issues. Pretty neat in that department. Still, the Voice Assistant isn’t working. Another big disappointment is WhatsApp isn’t supported on JIO phones. But the good news, though, is it supports HTML apps, and soon new apps will be available on the JioStore.
The Web Browser in the JIO phone is the worst part. Although you can browse the internet on it, you wouldn’t want to surf it on the JIO phone.
The main reason to purchase the JIO phone is its Rs. 153 plan gives unlimited 4G internet, free VoLTE calls, and unlimited SMS. The Unlimited 4G part is a bit twisted, though. You get only 500Mb of full-speed data, and the speed will be reduced. If you are looking to download torrents on this device overnight with unlimited data, it will not happen. That being said, you know now what the JIO phone delivers.
Verdict
JIO phone can’t be your primary device in today’s world, but you can use it as a secondary device to take the benefits of its low-priced package, or you can gift this device to your parents as I am going to do with it. If that’s not what you’ve in mind for the phone you want, the JIO phone isn’t really for you.