Reliance Jio may soon launch a low-cost laptop. According to an XDA report, the laptop may be called the JioBook. It is said to run on custom Android OS- JioOS. The laptop is also expected to come with 4G LTE connectivity support.
Initial reports of Jio working on a laptop dates back to the year 2018 when The Economic Times reported that Reliance Jio is in talks with Qualcomm to launch laptops with cellular connectivity. Nearly three years later, the partnership seems to conceptualise as JioBook.
As per the XDA report, Jio started working on the Jio low-cost laptop in September last year. It has partnered with China-based Bluebank Communication Technology to develop the laptop.
The laptop’s development stage is likely to continue in the first half of 2021. The product is expected to enter the PVT, or Product Validation Test, stage of the product development cycle by mid-April this year.
The XDA report says that it has reviewed the device’s firmware that seems to be running on forked Android as JioOS. “Jio’s prototype is currently using Qualcomm Snapdragon 665, an 11 chipset,” the report adds.
To recall, the chipset was announced in 2019. It is equipped with a built-in 4G LTE modem — the Snapdragon X12 to offer cellular connectivity.
JioBook: Likely features
The report says that JioBook will be equipped with a display having 1366×768 pixel resolution. Many iterations of the laptop have been developed so far. These include a 2GB LPDDR4X RAM with 32GB of EMMC storage and a 4GB LPDDR4X RAM with 64GB eMMC 5.1 storage.
The company, as per the report, has outsourced low-cost components from a different vendors. Notable ones are Samsung for their combined mobile DRAM and NAND chip and Qualcomm for its Snapdragon 665.
The upcoming laptop is said to be equipped with support for WiFi over 2.4 and 5GHz frequencies along with Bluetooth, a three-axis accelerometer, and a Qualcomm audio chip. It may also have a mini HDMI connector for video output.