Google has now announced a new partnership with JIO Platforms, aimed at delivering a new budget phone and better internet to users across India. The deal marks Google’s first investment from its Google For India Digitization Fund. As that implies, the end goal is to help the region grow its digital economy over the next five to seven years. To that end, it’s making equity investments and entering into new partnerships. That’s in addition to investments in more traditional operations, infrastructure, and the general ecosystem.
So what about the new JIO budget phone, co-developed by Google?
Now, details about plans for the new phone are slim. But it will be 4G-ready, with the pair betting on customers wanting to move away from the current standard used by many in India — namely, 2G. The partnership with Reliance JIO, India’s biggest telecom, is undoubtedly the place to start. And a budget-minded phone will certainly help as well.
The lack of in-depth information about the phone itself likely stems from plans to continue working with JIO to create solutions in the long-term.
JIO itself has worked with Android in the past. Specifically, in 2018, the company worked with the „Go” edition of Android for a similar bid. That was powered by a MediaTek chipset. As denoted by the use of Android Go, that device packed less than 1GB RAM and 8GB storage.
Given the trends in technology since then, this device will undoubtedly be more powerful than that. But it isn’t likely to be much more powerful than the most affordable phones around. It likely won’t be as powerful as some of the top budget-friendly phones on the market either.  And it won’t be using Android Go, which is now defunct. Instead, this phone will be co-developed by both Google and JIO. The two will build in custom system-level optimizations to take advantage of Android’s advances and affordable hardware.
When will this come and what is Google getting out of it?
The deal itself is still under regulatory review in India, and therefore pending approval. Google is still keeping details about the new JIO phone itself well under wraps as well. But the investment itself rings in at a healthy $4.5 billion from the search giant. In return, the company is hoping to take a 7.73-percent stake in the company. There’s no clear launch date planned for the phone, as of this writing.
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Source: ndroidheadlines.com