JioPhone Next offers seamless experience at affordable cost

By Waquar Haider

New Delhi, Nov 7 (IANS) JioPhone Next, developed by Google and Jio that created strong buzz in India as well as abroad, is finally available, offering great specifications at an affordable price point.

The made-for-India smartphone is available at an entry price of only Rs 1,999 and "the rest paid via easy EMI over 18 or 24 months". 

The affordable smartphone can also be purchased upfront without financing for only Rs 6,499.

We used the phone for around a week and here is what we think about one of the most anticipated smartphones of 2021. 

In terms of design, the phone looks decent in blue colour. The smartphone features a 5.45-inch touchscreen HD display that has 720x1440 pixels screen resolution. It has a front 8MP camera on the top.

On the right edge, the smartphone comes with a volume button and a power button. 

The phone features a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top, a micro-USB charging port on the bottom. 

The smartphone houses a speaker at the back with a rear camera and Jio branding. 

The display is big and good for those who love streaming videos/movies as well as playing games.

The smartphone runs on the new Pragati OS. It has been engineered by Jio and Google with an objective to bring 'Pragati' (meaning progress) for all, while offering a truly seamless experience at affordable cost. 

It is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon QM-215 chipset coupled with 2GB RAM and 32GB of internal storage, that is expandable up to 512GB via the microSD card.

The Qualcomm processor on the JioPhone Next focuses on delivering better connectivity and location technologies along with optimisations in device performance, audio and battery. 

The overall performance of the device is decent and one would not face any issue while performing daily tasks. 

The JioPhone Next comes with pre-installed Google apps including Google Play Store, YouTube and so on. Users will also get all the Jio apps pre-installed like other Jio phones.

The phone also comes with Voice assistant to help users to operate the device (Open App, manage settings etc) and get information/content from the Internet easily in a language familiar to them. 

The phone can even translate text into 10 major Indian languages.

There's 4G on board for fast connectivity, alongside dual-SIM, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth v4.1.

The phone houses a 13MP camera at the back and an 8MP sensor on the front. During the tests, the device managed to click some great shots. The selfie camera was decent enough.

The camera also supports various photography modes such as Portrait mode, allowing users to capture decent photos with automatically blurred background. 

The Night mode allows users to capture great photos even under low-light conditions.

The camera app also comes pre-loaded with custom Indian augmented reality filters to enhance the pictures. 

The smartphone packs a 3500mAh battery. This is coupled with a 5W charger inside the box. The phone comes with a microUSB port. With moderate usage, the battery lasted around a day.

Conclusion: JioPhone Next offers good overall performance at a very reasonable price. It is definitely meant for millions of users who still use feature phones and are planning to shift to a smartphone.

(Md Waquar Haider can be reached at [email protected])