Launch of budget 4G phones shows Reliance Jio effect
Indian smartphone maker, Intex, has announced another budget 4G phone for the consumer market on Thursday (July 20). With a price tag of Rs 6,999, the Intex Auqa Lions 3 – the company's second 4G-VoLTE device in a week – will look to make inroads into the budget 4G handset segment of the market recently created after the induction of telecom operator Reliance Jio.
The handset will be available via offline retailers in two colours – champagne and black – and will run Android 7.0 Nougat straight out of the box. Additionally, it will also provide native support for Microsoft's SwiftKey keyboard, which provides for typing in multiple languages – the company claims support for "Hinglish and 22 major Indian languages".
Speaking about the feature that is clearly aimed at bringing in more consumers from tier-II and tier-III cities, Swiftkey India's country head, Sarabjeet Singh said, "With SwiftKey's three adaptive ways to type Indian languages, every Indian user can communicate easily. We are excited to make this available to Intex customers."
What you get for the price
Coming back to what really matters, the 4G-VoLTE phone is adorned with a 5-inch HD IPS display with 2.5D curved glass at the front. The display is protected by a sturdy sheet of DragonTrail glass that not only helps keep the screen safe, but also provides smoother touch and swipe experience.
The Aqua Lions 3 features a textured patterned plastic back, which adds a dash of elegance to the phone and makes it stand apart from the sea of metal unibody designs available in the market. The device comes with 8-megapixel cameras at the front and the back, and brings with it 16GB of storage which can be expanded to 128GB using a MicroSD card.
The Aqua Lions 3 further impresses with a mammoth 4000 mAh battery pack, which is tasked to run the 1.25 GHz quad-core processor paired with 2GB RAM, something that surely appears to be good enough for over a day's runtime on heavy usage. However, what works against the Aqua Lions 3 is the lack of any kind of fast-charging capability.
Telecom industry being swept by the Jio 4G wave
With an investment of more than Rs 1.9 lakh crore, Reliance Jio's entry has changed the landscape of the telecom industry. Its gamble on a 4G based network has forced the hands of its competitors, and created the need for millions of 4G handsets in different brackets of the Rs 10,000 budget segment.
The Aqua Lions 4G's launch at a price of Rs 6,999 as such is indicative of the shift that the mobile phone-manufacturing industry is taking.
This latest offering from Intex is an attempt at easily accessing the lower end of the consumer base which still remains untapped because of a lack of 4G-based budget handsets.
It is also interesting to note that the smartphone's launch comes a day ahead of the expected announcement of Reliance Jio's Rs 500 4G feature phone that will reportedly be manufactured by Intex.
According to reports, Intex is in the final leg of finalising a partnership with Jio that will soon see the company introduce ultra-affordable 4G feature phones in the Indian market.
"We will launch this 4G feature phone in this quarter, but will not be selling it standalone in the market. We are in dialogue with Reliance Jio for bundling which should be through very soon," Nidhi Markanday, director and business head of Intex Technologies told the Economic Times.