JIOPHONE : REALLY A SMART FEATURE PHONE ??

By now it's high chance that you would have come across some article on internet or at-least a post on social media taking about Jio phone. For those who are still unfamiliar, it's somewhere between smartphone and a feature phone, you can call it a hybrid because it packs some features of a smartphone in body of a feature phone.

Jio phone

My experience

Keeping it straight and simple, this review comes from someone who gets all possible work done on a smartphone. So, as expected I was really annoyed by the fact there is no good voice input and you have to rely on that crappy keypad in many apps to do so.

Keypad on Jio phone

The keypad experience was worse than I expected. I had to press a key multiple times to register an input. To be sure that it is not a problem with my unit, I got my hands on another unit and still faced the same problem. It is quite unfortunate that Jio phone suffers from this issue cause it spoils the whole experience of navigating and interacting with device, though software was kind of okay. There were even times when I gave upon it's User Interface.

Cameras on this thing are perfect example of you get what you pay for. They are really very bad and what else one can expect from phone at this price point. I honestly think they should have provided a better front camera (for better video calls) at the expense of rear one cause anyway not even 20% of people are gonna use it for taking pics.

Two very strict requirements for decent video calls are that internet speed should be very good at your location (which is still a problem at many places) and you must be in very well lit environment.

Though Jio phone was released around an year ago in August of 2017, it is yet (as of when this post was published) to receive an update for WhatsApp and YouTube. As per company's announcement, it is expected to get these features starting from 15th August 2018. It might also get Google maps after YouTube. Other applications on Jio phone like Facebook and Jio apps work just fine when internet connectivity is good. As of now, voice input is limited to opening apps, making calls, sending messages and Google search on Google assistant.