Airtel Karbonn A40 vs Reliance JioPhone: Specs, features, tariff comparison

A ₹1,399 smartphone or a ₹1,500 smart feature phone? Here’s a detailed comparison between Airtel’s Karbonn A40 smartphone and Reliance JioPhone.

Airtel versus Reliance Jio: The competition heats up (Reliance Jio)

Airtel has responded to Reliance Jio's ultra-affordable JioPhone with its own 4G VoLTE smartphone, priced at ₹1,399.

Launched in partnership with domestic handset maker Karbonn Mobiles, Airtel is bundling voice and data benefits with the Karbonn A40. Customers will need to make a down payment of ₹2,899, and get cashback worth ₹1,500.

If you are planning to buy the Karbonn A40 or Reliance JioPhone, here's everything you need to know about the two devices, bundled data benefits, and more importantly fine prints.

KARBONN A40 VS RELIANCE JIOPHONE: SPECIFICATIONS COMPARISON

The key difference between the two devices is that the JioPhone sports a feature phone design and is locked to Jio's ecosystem whereas the Karbonn A40 is an entry-level smartphone with full access to Google and popular apps such as WhatsApp and Facebook.

Karbonn A40

The Karbonn A40 has a 4-inch WVGA display with 800 x 480 pixels resolution. It runs on Android 7.0 Nougat out-of-the-box. Under the hood runs a 1.3GHz processor coupled with 1GB of RAM. The smartphone comes with 8GB of built-in storage and supports expandable storage up to 32GB via a microSD card.

The smartphone features a 2-megapixel rear camera and 0.3-megapixel front camera and is powered by a 2,000mAh battery. Other important features of the phone include dual-SIM support, 4G, VoLTE, Bluetooth and GPS. The Karbonn A40 supports 22 Indian languages.

Reliance JioPhone

The Reliance JioPhone comes in a feature phone design. It has a 2.4-inch QWGA screen with 320x240 pixels resolution. It runs on KAI operating system and is powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core processor coupled with 512MB of RAM.

The phone has 4GB of built-in storage, expandable up to 128GB via a microSD card. It also has a 2-megapixel rear camera and a 0.3-megapixel front camera. The phone is also capable of shooting videos.

In terms of connectivity, the smart feature phone supports 4G VoLTE, single SIM, Bluetooth 4.1, FM Radio, NFC, GPS and microUSB 2.0 and is powered by a 2,000mAh battery. The JioPhone also supports 22 Indian languages.

Karbonn A40 vs Reliance JioPhone: Offers, fine prints

Airtel is offering unlimited voice calls along with 500MB 4G data per day with a recharge of ₹169 (validity up to 28 days).

Reliance Jio is also offering unlimited voice calls, 500MB of 4G data along with free 300 SMS and access to Jio suite of apps such as JioTV, JioCinema, JioVideoCall and JioGames among others.

Fine prints

To buy a Reliance JioPhone, customers will first need to book the phone for ₹500. Reliance Jio currently has halted the pre-orders for the phone, but is expected to resume taking orders very soon. At delivery, customers need to pay the remaining ₹1,000.

Note that Reliance Jio is taking a security deposit of ₹1,500, which is refundable after three years. Also, customers need to make recharges worth ₹4,500 (₹1,500 minimum per year) during the three-year time frame.

To buy Airtel's Karbonn A40, customers need to make a down payment of ₹2,899. Also, you need to make monthly recharges of ₹169 for continuous 36 months. After 18 months, the customer will get a cash refund of ₹500, and another ₹1,000 after 36 months.

While Airtel customers can choose to do recharges of any other denomination and validity, they need to make recharges worth ₹3,000 within the first 18 months (for the first instalment of ₹500) and another ₹3,000 over the next 18 months (for the second instalment of ₹1,000).

Both Airtel and Reliance Jio are giving early exit options to their customers.

Karbonn A40 vs Reliance JioPhone: Which is more value for money?

Even though similarly priced, the Karbonn A40 and Reliance JioPhone are targeted at two separate sets of consumers. The former focuses on consumers who want a phone at a very low price and cannot compromise on popular apps such as Google Maps, WhatsApp and Facebook.

The JioPhone is aimed at consumers who are looking to upgrade from the existing 2G feature phones without spending more and get started with high-speed mobile data. With feature phone-like specifications, JioPhone offers a longer battery life as well as access to multimedia content from Jio's suite of apps.