Reliance is on a handset launching spree as it unveiled yet another LYF smartphone -- Wind 5 -- in India, heating up competition in the already crowded budget smartphone category. The company's LYF brand has four categories -- Earth, Water, Wind and Flame. The new Wind 5 smartphone is listed for Rs. 6,599 and will be available in offline stores soon.
In recent weeks, LYF has added several 4G LTE-enabled smartphones and the Wind 5 is the latest one. Prior to that, the company introduced Flame 6, Flame 3, Flame 4, Flame 2, Wind 4 and Water 5. The Wind 5 is a budget entry, like many others, competing to attract consumers in the budget smartphone category where handsets like Meizu m2 and Coolpad Note 3 Lite are popular choices.
For the price, LYF Wind 5 offers a 5-inch HD IPS display, an 8MP primary camera with LED flash and a 5MP front snapper. The dual SIM smartphone supports 4G LTE and VoLTE, like other LYF smartphones. It is powered by a quad-core MediaTek 6735P processor, 1GB RAM and offers 8GB in expandable storage.
Under the hood, there is a 2,000mAh removable battery, which the company claims to offer up to 6.5 hours of 4G talk time. The Wind 5 and Wind 6 smartphones are priced similarly with different configurations. The Wind 5 offers better camera and display resolution than the Wind 6, but settles for a smaller battery and slightly lower processor. LYF has another smartphone in the Wind series, Wind 4, which is priced at Rs. 6,799, and offers better of both Wind 5 and 6 smartphones.
Recently it was reported that Reliance started selling its LYF smartphones with SIM cards with access to 4G LTE across major cities in India. Jio SIM cards reportedly offer unlimited data for three months and 4,500 minutes of voice calls for free, but there is no official knowledge of that.
Reliance LYF smartphone is expected to become a $1 billion brand in FY2017, which ends March next year, brokerage firm CLSA predicted, according to the Economic Times. The brand is expected to account for about 7 percent market share with an estimated sale of 10 million LYF smartphones this fiscal year. Counterpoint Research found that Reliance LYF had acquired a 7 percent share in India's smartphone market in the first quarter of 2016 and ranked fifth.
