Soon JioPhone-Like Smart Feature Phones to Support Dual SIM & 3G

Apart from JioPhone, nt many phone brands are offering smart feature phones yet, but this could change in 2019.

Nokia 8110 4G is a smart feature phone. 

(Photo: The Quint)

Riding on JioPhone’s popularity, more phone makers are jumping into the smart feature phone wagon and 2019 is likely to see more brands launching products in this segment. To support this cause, chipset makers are looking beyond 4G, and have decided these affordable devices should ideally support both 3G and 4G network.

And for this, Mediatek seems to be the first name to launch its processors for these phone that will not only support 3G but will let you users two SIMs on a single device.

The company’s MT6572 (3G) and MT6731 (3G) mobile platform will now support Kai OS (running on JioPhone) and new devices with support for the upgraded features are likely to launch in Q2 2019.

Mediatek has been late to the smart feature phone party, with Spectrum and Qualcomm being the only available chipset brands for phone makers to partner with.

The chipmaker believes both these chipsets are optimised to support features like quad-core 64-bit processing and dual 4G SIM technology to the entry-segment mobile phone market.

According to a recent Counterpoint report over the next three years, nearly 370 million smart feature phones are expected to be sold across the world and Mediatek is probably chipping its name into the ring for obvious reasons.

Apart from JioPhone, we haven’t seen any other brand entering this segment till now but that trend is likely to change and the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2019 in Barcelona next week could probably give us glimpse into that.