Reliance Industries (RIL) has suspended the pre-booking of its newly launched feature phone, JioPhone, through its official website jio.com without any information about when will they resume it again. It is due to the high demand for the device far exceeded the target of making available 5 million phones a week. The website is currently limited the customers to register for the phone. It has been an ambitious project for the Mukesh Ambani, and the company is targeting over 100 million units to be shipped in the first year.
The main attraction of jioPhone is its cheap rate and advanced facilities other than in regular feature phone. Such as, 2 megapxiel front camera, VGA camera on the front, 4GB internal storage which can be expanded to 128 GB with help of memory card and 2000 mAh battery web browsing, attending video calls, and watch movies etc. Feature phones are generally limited to calling and SMS. The phone also supports popular social media apps like Facebook, but not the popular WhatsApp messenger.
The monthly plan on the JioPhone has been set at Rs 153, which offers 500MB of data per day for 28 days validity. Reliance Jio will be offering a weekly plan for Rs 54 and a two-day plan for Rs 24 for unlimited data access.
Pre-booking of the JioPhone started in the evening of August 24, 2017 on both offline and online stores. Within minutes there massive rush which down the website of Reliance Jio for almost the entire day. A message, which has been uploaded on the Jio website, says that the company “will inform you when pre-booking resumes.” The website has apparently not given any reason for suspension of the feature phone. However, it is now only allowing customers to register on the website by clicking on ‘register now’ option showing on the banner.
When Click on “Register Now”, there will be two options available, The first one is ‘individual’ and the second one is ‘business’. If any customer books, he will have to specify the details like name, email address, phone number, pincode and then submit to register interest . If booking for business, we have to provide information like contact name, company name, pincode, PAN number or GSTN number, contact person email, contact persons number and number of devices required . After filling these information you just have to click “submit”.
The 4G-enabled feature phone is said to cost you Rs Zero. However, one has to pay Rs 1,500 as a security deposit, which will be 100 percent refundable after three years. The company is providing free voice calls, unlimited data and Jio apps for Rs 153 per month with Jio Dhan Dhana Dhan plans to JioPhone customers.
Pre-booking of JioPhones via the offline has also been suspended across the country. According to sources, the delivery is expected to start around the second week of September.