Reliance Jio’s ‘smartish’ feature phone will now have a Google Assistant of its own

Google has built a whole new version of Google Assistant just for Jio Phone. Jio Phone users can now interact with the new version of Google Assistant on their Jio feature phones. Google announced its partnership with Jio phone at the third edition of Google for India event in New Delhi along with many key announcements for India market. The special version of the Google Assistant will become available on the Jio Phone from today without the need for any manual update.


This is the first time ever a version of the Assistant is available on a feature phone. Google says that it has built the Google Assistant for the Jio Phone from the ground up to work well on the Jio Phone.

Mukesh Ambani led Reliance Jio launched Jio Phone in July this year, it’s a 4G VoLTE feature phone with a small 2.4-inch display, 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 512MB of RAM, 2000mAh battery and it has 4GB of internal storage, with microSD support up to 128GB. Even though it’s not a smart phone, it has features like Wi-fi support and NFC for digital payments. Jio Phone runs on KAI OS, while the phone is pre-loaded with Jio’s own apps the OS does not support many popular apps like Facebook, Watsapp. More importantly the phone already has a virtual voice assistant of its own.

With the Google Assistant for the Jio Phone, as demonstrated by Google, you can get answers and find local information, play music or videos, and also change the settings of your device with voice commands. It also connects you to the apps on your phone, from Google apps like Search or YouTube, to system apps, Jio apps and other third-party services that are available for Jio Phone. The Google Assistant for the Jio Phone will be available both in Hindi and English. This is the first time that a version of the Google Assistant is available on a phone in Hindi. With Google’s expertise in natural language processing and voice recognition, Jio users can have a conversation with their Google Assistant in Hindi to get things done. And as is the case always, the experience will get better with time.



This could be a win-win partnership for both Jio and Google, while Google can reach out to a lot more new users in India with the rapidly growing Jio Phone users all over the country, Jio subscribers will get to talk to Google Assistant on a feature phone.