Can JioPhone 2 replace your smartphone? Of course, it can

I have been using JioPhone 2 for the last few weeks as my backup smartphone (stream music, watch videos, and to watch live television). As a tech blogger, I get to try a lot of devices, and JioPhone 2 is the only featurephone that I have used in the last two years. The JioPhone 2 is a special device, which offers most of the smartphone's features with a featurephone smartphone.

Can you replace your smartphone with a JioPhone 2? And how is the overall performance of the phone? I will try to answer some of the most asked questions about JioPhone 2.

Must-know features of the JioPhone 2

Price - Affordable

• The main advantage of JioPhone 2 is the price, the device retails in India for Rs 2,499, making it one of the most affordable phones with 4G LTE and VoLTE connectivity.

Design - Classic Blackberry style

• The JioPhone 2 comes with a new and improved design with a horizontal display setup and a QWERTY keypad, which reminiscent of the yesteryear Blackberry smartphones. QWERTY keypad will help for those chat heads.

Software- Custom made for India

• The JioPhone is powered by KaiOS, which now supports apps like Hotstar, Voot, WhatsApp, Facebook, and other My Jio apps. The device also comes with Google Assistant and Google Maps with active GPS tracking. However, at times the phone behaves strangely, where it gets frozen and requires hard-restart (removing and adding the battery).

User-replaceable battery

• The JioPhone 2 has a 2000 mAh user replaceable battery. With active internet usage, the phone can last up to a complete day on a single charge, and the laptop also supports 10w fast charging via micro USB port.

Dual SIM card slots

• Though the JioPhone has dual SIM card slots, the device can only accept Jio SIM cards and does not support other network SIM cards, which is a bit disappointing. The device does feature a dedicated microSD card slot, which can accept microSD cards up to 128 GB.

Same hardware as the first Gen JioPhone

• The JioPhone 2 offers exactly similar specifications as of the original JioPhone. Same display, same processor, same amount of RAM, and corresponding features.

Verdict

Coming back to a feature phone from a smartphone is a bit difficult. However, as I used the JioPhone 2 as my secondary device, I did not face any significant issue. The phone supports WhatsApp, YouTube, has a standard web browser, and it also has apps like JioSaavn and Jio TV, making it a future-ready featurephone. Once you start using the QWERTY keypad, it is very easy to type on compared to a T4 keypad, and it saves a lot of time while drafting a text.

The device has Bluetooth, which can be used to connect audio peripherals like speakers and headphone, and I did not face a single issue with respect to connectivity.

Compared to a smartphone, the JioPhone 2 has a smaller display and the absence of touch input might irik a bit, but after the few days of usage, then it becomes easier by the day. The JioPhone 2 has the body of a featurephone and a soul of a smartphone. The JioPhone 2 does not support Wi-Fi Hotspot, which means one cannot share the JioPhone data with other devices.

The only difference between the first and the second gen JioPhone is the display orientation and the QWERTY keypad. Go for the JioPhone 2, only for the QWERTY keypad. The JioPhone, at the price of Rs 1500 is still an excellent entry-level 4G phone.