QWERTY-packing JioPhone 2 unveiled, it and the Nokia 8110 4G are getting WhatsApp

The JioPhone 2 was just unveiled – an INR 3,000 ($44/€37) phone with a hardware QWERTY keyboard and KaiOS (the Firefox-based featurephone platform). The phone will be available from August 15 with WhatsApp, Facebook and YouTube apps out of the box.

The connectivity features of the handset are quite impressive. It’s a dual-SIM phone with VoLTE and VoWi-Fi support, it has 150Mbps LTE, GPS, NFC, Bluetooth LE, Wi-Fi and FM radio.

The rest of the JioPhone 2 hardware is nothing special. It has a 2.4” QVGA screen, D-pad and a QWERTY. It’s powered by a dual-core processor with 512MB of RAM and 4GB storage (plus a microSD slot for up to 128GB more). There’s a 2MP camera on the back and a 0.3MP cam on the front. The battery has a 2,000mAh capacity.

Still, the original Jio was pretty similar (sans the QWERTY) and it sold 25 million units in India, making it the #1 featurephone globally. By the way, if you have the original Jio, you can swap it for a JioPhone 2 for INR 500 ($7/€6).

HMD’s Chief Product Officer Juho Sarvikas tweeted that WhatsApp is coming to the Nokia 8110 4G as it also runs KaiOS. There’s more – thanks to Google support, Google Maps, Search and Assistant will launch on the feature phone platform as well.

Oh look, #Whatsapp on #KaiOS! Looking forward to going 🍌s! https://t.co/Av6gW3T2M0

— Juho Sarvikas (@sarvikas) July 5, 2018

In related news, Jio is launching a gigabit service, GigaFiber, which will reach 1,100 cities in India. Jio started beta testing the service last year offering 100Mbps Preview Offer, but has promised up to 1Gbps when it launches in earnest. The service will use a router alongside the GigaTV set-top box.

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