Most of you are excited about the Rs 0 priced 4G VoLTE feature phone or JioPhone from Indian telecom operator Reliance Jio. We have an idea of what’s the phone look like, its design and some of its features. Still, we didn’t have a clue about the hardware, chipset part that power’s the whole device.
Thanks to the global chipmaker Qualcomm, JioPhone from Reliance Jio will be powered by the newest Qualcomm 205 Mobile Platform. Qualcomm India in a tweet shared the news about its Qualcomm 205 SoC that goes into JioPhone.
Spreadtrum the Chinese company that develops mobile chipset has also announced they have partnered with Jio for the JioPhone. So, probably some JioPhone to be powered by Spreadtrum SoC.
Qualcomm 205 SoC powered JioPhone
The Qualcomm 205 Mobile Platform that power’s the JioPhone includes Qualcomm 205 SoC and various hardware components. This includes dual-core CPU clocked at 1.1 GHz and Qualcomm Adreno GPU. It also features support for Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and advanced 4G LTE data services like Voice over LTE (VoLTE) and Voice over Wi-Fi (VoWi-Fi). So, JioPhone will support high-speed connectivity with 4G LTE support along with VoLTE for making HD voice calls. Also, the chipset supports Wi-Fi connectivity, so there is a possibility of JioPhone to support Wi-Fi hotspot, which was not announced during the phone launch.
The Qualcomm 205 SoC comes with a 4G LTE Cat 4 modem which can offer 4G download speed of up to 150Mbps and uploads up to 50Mbps. It will also support older network connectivity options like 3G and 2G. The chipset also carries support for Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.1, ANT+ and FM radio. The chipset can support rear cameras up to 3-megapixel and selfie cameras up to 0.3-megapixel. So, probably JioPhone will come with a 3-megapixel rear camera and VGA front camera. This camera can capture videos up to 480p at 60 frames-per-second. You can get more details about the chipset in our previous article.
Coming back to JioPhone, it supports 22 major Indian languages and comes with voice command. The phone comes preloaded with all Jio suite apps including Jio Music, Jio Cinema, Jio TV. The phone can be programmed to send a distress message to an emergency contact with the press of a button (numeric keypad 5). It also packs NFC hardware which will be activated later in a software update. Once enabled, you can use NFC to make ‘Tap and Pay‘ digital payments by linking bank, Jan-Dhan, UPI, credit or debit cards. The phone can also mirror its screen contents to a TV screen with an add-on accessory cable. Still, one missing piece is the operating system that runs on the device. Is it Android or a customised Android-based ROM or simply Java?