At its Google for India event today, Google has announced a plethora of new things for the Indian market. Amongst all the announcements, the major one is the Google Assistant for Reliance JioPhone. Yes, Google is making it happen. It's bringing the smartest feature of Android to the feature phone. The JioPhone is the first feature phone to support Google Assistant.
Google touts the Assistant for JioPhone as a special version designed for the JioPhone, and of course, it's built for India. The Google Assistant for JioPhone supports both English and Hindi, and brings the benefits of Google Assistant to millions of first-time internet users on the JioPhone with an intuitive voice-based user interface, along with a set of data services.
The Google Assistant on Reliance JioPhone can help the user make phone calls, text, play music and videos, navigate and search the internet, and access other apps and services.
When it launched a year ago, the Google Assistant was an exclusive feature of Google Pixel devices. Later on, the company expanded to all the Android smartphones, before releasing it for Apple's iOS. And now, the company has launched the Google Assistant for feature phones.
The JioPhone already comes with Jio's customized voice assistant, and the addition of Google Assistant will be an added bonus for the consumers looking to purchase the smartest feature phone. Reliance Jio is looking to sell at least 100 million JioPhone units, and the addition of Google Assistant will even benefit the search giant.
Google also stated that it's customizing the Assistant experience to match the smaller 2.4-inch display on the JioPhone. However, it said that the features would be the same ones as available for Android and iOS devices.
The Reliance JioPhone features a 2.4-inch QVGA display and is the first feature phone to come powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 205 SoC. It has 512MB of RAM and 4GB of internal storage, which can be expanded with a microSD card. The device runs Jio's customised Kai OS and is backed by a 2000mAh battery. The device is effectively priced at Rs 0, but Jio is collecting an amount of Rs 1,500 as a security deposit. You can now purchase the JioPhone by heading over to a nearby Jio store.
