Over the past few weeks, the front pages have been awash with news of Google’s latest entrant in the Pixel line up, the Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro and rightly so, as the Pixel 6 series have been described as a breath of fresh air in an increasingly stale high-end market for Android smartphones. However, the Pixel 6 has not been the only smartphone Google has unveiled this month.
Jio, an Indian telecom company, together with Google, unveiled their budget smartphone targeting the Indian market on the 29th of October. The phone, which is an affordable 4G device, is described as “designed to serve the unique needs of the Indian consumer” by Ram Papatla, the Android India engineering lead.
India will not be officially getting the new Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, but one can buy it from another country and import it. However, pretty much like Kenya, the prices of these premium phones put them out of reach of many smartphone consumers in the country.
Google and Jio, who already know this, have as a result designed the JioPhone Next, to offer a means by which the very large population in India can have a smartphone capable of 4G connection at an affordable price.
The phone itself is priced at 6499 Indian rupees, the equivalent of around Kshs 9,700, and one can also get it by putting a down payment of 1999 rupees (Kshs 3,000) and choosing a payment plan through the telecom company.
On the inside, the JioPhone Next runs on a stripped-down version of the Android OS, which Google calls it the Pragati OS. The device still has access to the Play Store for users to download various apps they might need. Other interesting features packed in the entry-level device include, read aloud and language translation for on-screen text, a camera with India-centric Snapchat Lenses, and embedded voice-first features that support 10 different languages spoken in India.
On the hardware side of things, the phone has a 5.45-inch HD plus Corning Gorilla Glass 3 display, a 60Hz refresh rate, a 13-megapixel rear camera with support for HDR, an 8-megapixel autofocus front camera, a 3,500mAh battery, a Qualcomm quad-core QM-215 chipset, with 2 GB of RAM, and 32 GB of expandable storage. It’s dual-SIM capable.
India and Kenya have so many similarities despite being oceans apart, with both countries being widely recognized as hotbeds for technology and innovation in their respective regions. Google, targeting the country of India with a phone tailored for their needs, is mainly because they have such a huge market of more than 400 million smartphone users that ignoring it is simply making bad business decisions.
I would love for a similar device to hit our Kenyan shores, at an affordable price, and also without being subjected to an operating system that is injected with ads, trackers and all sorts of malware to the extent that a user can not experience a phone he or she has paid for without being frustrated.
A stripped-down smartphone without the bells and whistles while still being capable of everyday use is ideal for our elderly parents or those of us who are not obsessed by 120 Hz displays.
