Reliance JioBook, anther path-breaking device that could redefine the equations of PC market in India.
After having a successful run with Jio phones which helped more than 100 million Indian users move from 2G to the 4G network, Reliance Jio now wants to launch a low-cost laptop!
According to XDA-Developers, RIL’s telecom and digital services arm is currently developing a laptop called JioBook.
This news isn’t exactly shocking as Miguel Nunes – Senior Director of Product Management at Qualcomm, back in 2018, reportedly mentioned that the company was in talks with Reliance Jio to launch laptops with cellular connectivity. Three years later, now JioBook is finally on its way to becoming a reality.
As per XDA’s firmware review of the device, Reliance’s laptop may arrive with a modified version of Android OS dubbed as JioOS. The prototype JioBook is running on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 665 while its chipset seemed to be supporting only 4G LTE (Snapdragon X12).
Reliance Jio, for developing JioBook, is partnering up with BlueBank Communication Technology – a China-based engineering firm that develops mobile devices and software for third party companies.
Bluebank has possibly already worked with Reliance Jio previously because their website states its work includes KaiOS which is a popular OS for feature phones including Jio Phone.
XDA’s media report states that JioBook’s development began late last year in the month of September and may continue throughout the first half of 2021 as well. Currently, at the EVT aka Engineering Validation Test stage, the JioBook had hardware that was unfinalised which includes a recycled keyboard that has a Windows Key as displayed below.
Reliance’s laptop will enter the PVT Product Validation Test stage by mid-April 2021, thus it is quite likely the leaked design will look a lot similar to the final design. But, that being said, the Windows Key button will most certainly be swapped by some other key because it won’t be running on Microsoft’s Windows OS.
Furthermore, JioBook’s firmware hinted at the possibility of the laptop having a 1366×768 resolution display. However, the screen size has not been concretely decided on yet.
For developing the laptop, Reliance Jio and BlueBank are apparently sourcing low-cost components from various different vendors which include Samsung for DRAM and NAND chip while Qualcomm for Snapdragon 665.
XDA-Developers has reported that the laptop may come with dual-band Wi-Fi for internet connectivity, an HDMI connector for video output, Bluetooth, a three-axis accelerometer and a Qualcomm audio chip. What more?
The JioBook is said to be pre-loaded with several applications from Jio’s service umbrella such as JioMeet, JioPages, JioStore and more. Along with that, the laptop will interestingly also have several Microsoft apps pre-installed which includes Microsoft Teams, Edge and the highly popular Office Suite.
Lastly, the XDA report suggests that the Reliance-built laptop might hit the store shelves around mid-May and will be incredibly low priced. But, again, there is no word about a rough ballpark figure yet.
Also, it is important to note the name ‘JioBook’ runs the possibility of being scraped off when it finally launches. However, given the naming scheme of Reliance so far (for instance Jio Phone) it is highly unlikely. We will keep you updated on all future developments. Until then, stay tuned.
