A new feature phone just entered India priced at only Rs 1,299; is it better than JioPhone 2?

Looks like a new rival has entered for Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio in smartphone market. Ambani has highlighted his vision to sway the feature phone market by making them affordable, data centric and also having amazing features. This even led to the eventual launch of JioPhone 2 last year - it concentrates more on rural market. Everyone believed that Reliance Jio, via Jio Phone and Jio Phone 2, had sewed up the market. But guess what! HMD Global has now launched a new feature phone, Nokia 106 in India, at a starting price of just Rs 1,299. On its website, Nokia 106 is described as a phone that perfectly fits in your hand. 

Made from tough polycarbonate, Nokia 106 is built to last. Its coloring runs deep into the material, which makes scratches less detectable. 

In terms of market price, Nokia 106 is quite cheap compared to JioPhone 2 which is offered at more than double rate of Rs 2,999. But is the former better than the latter in case of services and features? Let’s find out! 

Nokia 106 is boosted for having a long lasting battery, as it is packed to deliver 21 days standby between charges and you can also talk over fifteen hours on a single charge. You can also use a standard USB charger to power up. With this, Nokia 106 has 800 mAh battery. 

Further, Nokia 106 is powered by  MediaTek MT6261D SoC, meanwhile, features 1.8-inch QQVGA (160x120 pixels) TFT display. 

Packed with 4MB RAM, the Nokia 106 also has an onboard storage of 4MB. 

Apart from this, one can play the classic Snake Xenzia and preloaded try-and-buy games like Nitro Racing, Danger Dash, Tetris and more. 

Nokia 106 also holds up to 2000 contacts and 500 text messages, so you can easily keep in touch with your business network, friends and family.

The Nokia 106 size excluding camera measures as 111.15 x 49.5 x 14.4 mm, whereas weight including battery comes at 70.2 gram. The phone has a network speed of GSM 900/1800(EU). Apart from this, the phone will be available in Dark Grey color. 

On the other hand, featuring a 2.40-inch display, 240 X 320 pixels resolution and 512MB of RAM. JioPhone2 is an upgraded version of existing JioPhone and comes with full QWERTY keypad for ease of messaging.

Features of JioPhone 2 includes LTE Band, Dual sim, 2.4 OVGA, 2000 mAh battery, sd card up to 128GB, loud mono speaker, 2MP back camera with VGA (front) camera, qwerty keypad and 4-way Nav Key.

Even though in terms of pricing JioPhone 2 feature phone seems expensive in comparison to Nokia’s latest launch. Yet JioPhone 2 outruns Nokia 106 in terms of 4G network, microSD facility, RAM, camera, qwerty keypad and big body.