JioPhone Next with Android OS launched in India.
JioPhone Next has been announced at the Reliance Industries 44th Annual General Meeting (AGM). The announcement was made by Mukesh Ambani on Thursday. The company announced a partnership with Google last year and the new JioPhone Next is a result of that partnership. The entry-level smartphone comnes with an optimised version of Android.
As for the features, the JioPhone Next comes with the Google Play Store, which means the users will be able to install all of their favourite apps. The operating system also brings features like voice assistant, automatic read-aloud of screen text, and language translation.
Mukesh Ambani at the AGM said, "India still has nearly 300 million mobile users who are unable to escape from inefficient and exorbitant 2G services… because even a basic 4G smartphone remains unaffordable for these users. Last year… Sundar and I had talked about Google and Jio co-developing a next-generation, feature-rich, but extremely affordable smartphone."
Reliance Jio has not yet announced the price of the new smartphone. However, they claim that this will not only be the most affordable Android smartphone in India but it will be the most affordable smartphone in the world. Although most of the features have been revealed, the launch date of the smartphone has been officially set to September 10.
"JioPhone Next is powered by an extremely optimised version of the Android operating system that has been jointly developed by Jio and Google, specially for the Indian market," said Mukesh Ambani at the virtual AGM. He further added, "This is a testimony to a global technology giant, and a national technology champion, working together to make truly a breakthrough product that can be first introduced in India, and then taken to the rest of the world."
