Reliance JioPhone adds supports for WhatsApp, Facebook and YouTube

After adding support for Google Assistant, Reliance JioPhone will be adding the popular WhatsApp, Facebook and YouTube applications.

New version of JioPhone to be launched soon (HT Photo)

Reliance Jio on Thursday announced the launch of JioPhone 2, a newer and better version of its JioPhone. The latest smart feature phone comes with the support for popular applications like Facebook, WhatsApp, and YouTube. These apps will also be rolled out to the original JioPhone.

JioPhone users have long sought after these applications, even though the phone comes with a bunch of Jio suite apps like JioMusic, JioCinema, JioGames, and JioTV among others. Rivals like Micromax have tried to capitalise the gap with its own version of a smart feature phone but with support for Facebook and WhatsApp. The domestic handset player launched Micromax Bharat 1 with competitive specifications almost two months after the JioPhone launch.

The announcement about the inclusion of the popular applications like WhatsApp and Facebook come shortly after the KaiOS, the company that builds OS for JioPhone, received $22 million in funding led by Google. The partnership with Google allows KaiOS to bake more Google apps like Maps, Assistant and YouTube to smart feature phones. Most likely, JioPhone will get support for the other Google apps soon.

Late last year, Google announced rolling out its virtual assistant to JioPhone. In February this year, Google revealed its Google Assistant users had grown six-fold across India after the roll-out.