Reliance JioPhone Users to Get a Taste of WhatsApp Soon

JioPhone to get WhatsApp starting 15 August.

WhatsApp soon to roll out on JioPhone.

(Photo Courtesy: Reliance Jio live stream screengrab)

The new JioPhone 2 and the broadband service that’s been in the pipeline for months were unveiled at the 5 July Reliance 41st AGM (Annual General Meeting).

But the biggest announcement of the event, spearheaded by Reliance head Mukesh Ambani, was that of the introduction of WhatsApp for the JioPhone. This feature will also be available on the upcoming JioPhone 2.

YouTube soon to roll out on JioPhone.

The messaging platform will be rolled out on the JioPhone starting 15 August, along with other applications like YouTube and Facebook.

There was a demonstration of the upcoming WhatsApp feature during the live event. Reliance Jio director and Mukesh Ambani’s son, Akash Ambani used a JioPhone to send a WhatsApp message to Kiran Thomas, the Director of Reliance One Enterprises Limited.

The company also announced that Jio currently has a user base of 215 million users, a number that has grown prodigiously over the past couple of months.

Aaksh Ambani demoed the new WhatsApp feature on the JioPhone at the event.

YouTube for the JioPhone will be rolled out from 15 August, it was announced. The feature was demonstrated at the event when Kiran Thomas played the teaser of ‘Sanju’ on YouTube using the JioPhone voice command feature.

In February this year, Jio began offering support for Facebook. The new Facebook app for JioPhone supports push notifications, videos, and links to external content. The app is also optimised to successfully accommodate the cursor function on the JioPhone, which runs on the Kai OS platform, one of the few devices to support this operating system.

This new version of the Facebook app has been built specially for Jio KaiOS, a web based operating system designed for JioPhone.