Reliance has reportedly shifted the manufacturing of its JioPhone from China to India. As per a LiveMint report, the Chinese manufacturing facility where the feature phone was being made has run into supply issues and the company has already started its manufacturing in India and has brought a vendor from Chennai onboard.
The report says that the first 6 million units of the handset were made in China, but due to production issues, Jio could miss on delivering its sales target of delivering 200 million handsets by December 2018. Also, the manufacturing team in China team hasn’t been able to deliver the devices on time.
As per a previous report, Jio has resumed sales of the JioPhone for the 10 million customers who pre-booked the feature phone in August. The feature phone is priced at Rs 1,500 but is essentially free. Customers need to pay a sum of Rs 500 while pre-ordering the device and the remaining Rs 1000 when they receive the phone. Users will be refunded the entire amount if they submit the device back to the company after 3 years.
The JioPhone features voice commands which will soon be replaced by the Google Assistant. Google has designed a special version of the Google Assistant meant for the JioPhone which recognises both English and Hindi voice input. The smart assistant can respond to voice commands in Hindi and users will be able to play songs, send text messages and ask for recipes. You can read more about it here.