JioPhone: Everything we don't know which we want to know

"The highlight from Reliance Jio’s 40th AGM was the JioPhone. After talking about cheap data connections and offers over the past year or so, Jio seems to be moving to the second phase of its plan. The company has been steadily increasing its portfolio of Lyf branded smartphones, but the Jiophone is a feature phone with 4G connectivity, something Jio has been working on for quite a while now."

But, for everything Mukesh Ambani said at the AGM, we may have more questions than answers now.

What we don't know

Operating system 

Reliance Jio’s announcements only give us the meaty part of the deal. By the looks of things, the Jiophone is smarter than regular feature phones. That leaves us three possibilities for the operating system on it.The first includes a forked and heavily stripped down version of Android. This is possible since Jio’s apps were originally built for Android and iOS. So, adapting them to an Android-based platform will be easier.

The second option for Jio would have been to build its own ecosystem for feature phones. The company has enough users to get developers interested in the long term, and it would go with Jio’s pitch that it is a technology company first. This, though would mean that Jio had to rebuild its apps for the new platform, and now has to work on developers to build more for it.

Lastly, Jio could be using one of the existing feature phone operating systems, like Series 30+ used on the Nokia 3310. This would need the company to adapt its apps to these platforms, but also give Jio access to pre-existing ecosystem of applications.

The choice of operating system is important here, since it will play a huge rule in determining end-user experience. One could argue that Jio’s target market here is people who do not have access to any smart services, and that end-user experience isn’t as important for such a market, as it is in Tier I and II cities. But as any popular phone will prove, such an approach never works in the longer term.

App Support

The new version of the Nokia 3310 supports stripped down versions of Facebook and Twitter, but doesn’t have WhatsApp. And that’s been one of the biggest criticisms for that device. Reliance Jio wouldn’t want that criticism for the Jiophone. In its claimed endeavour of connecting users, Jio needs to ensure that popular apps are supported on its phone.

The easiest way to do this is by offering a version of Android on the phone, since it adds support for the Google Play Store, but it will be interesting to see which route Jio took. According to reports, the phone doesn't have WhatsApp support.

JioPhone TV Cable

The JioPhone TV cable sounds a lot like an MHL cable that connects from the phone to the television, via HDMI. Alternatively, it could be a MHL to RCA cable, which would also cover CRT televisions, that are still present in the markets Ambani spoke about. The live TV playback would obviously come from Jio’s own Live TV apps. That said, connecting to a CRT television will still need a digital to analog convertor somewhere in between. Something like this.

Processor

We don’t usually bother about the chipset running on a feature phone, but with everything Reliance Jio has promised, a quad-core chipset will be warranted. Of course, we have seen low power chipsets streaming full HD content, so it shouldn’t be all that difficult either.

Update: Qualcomm confirmed through a tweet that the JioPhone runs on the Snapdragon 205 platform, which is a dual core chipset. Alternatively, Spreadtrum also says it has some involvement in Jio's feature phones. We think this partnership is for future phones, but we're trying to confirm the same at the moment.

"These were the few of things which we dont know about the JioPhone and we wished to get the anser of these questions"