The feature phone market has a strong foothold in India's mobile industry and Reliance Jio's JioPhone acquired lion's share in the category. Picking up hints from JioPhone's success story, Xiaomi is looking to ignite a similar trend in China with the launch of its Qin Ai smart feature phone.
Xiaomi Qin AI is available in China on its crowd-funding platform. It is priced at ¥199, which roughly translates to Rs 2,000. There's no word on whether or not the phone will arrive in India, but it is a possibility if Xiaomi's new attempt is a hit in its homeland. If that happens, Xiaomi's Qin Ai could challenge JioPhone as well as JioPhone 2 with some interesting features.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves here. Until the company confirms Qin Ai's launch in India, it's best to keep your expectations minimal. But that shouldn't stop you from increasing your knowledge base and knowing what Xiaomi's feature phone actually offers that could make it an appealing JioPhone alternative.
Xiaomi Qin Ai features a 2.8-inch QVGA display with a physical T9 keypad. Unlike JioPhone, Qin Ai feature phone doesn't have cameras but prides in offering forked Android OS called Mocor 5, which comes with AI voice features for real-time translation in 17 languages. But the lack of cameras onboard is unnatural in phones these days, to which Xiaomi says it is done keeping security of the users in mind.
Much like any digital voice assistant, the AI onboard Qin Ai can answer your queries and tell poems to children. Since the phone runs a version of Android OS, users will be able to install apps like WhatsApp, Facebook by side-loading them on to the phone.
The 4G VoLTE-powered Qin Ai comes with an SC9820E ARM Cortex A53 dual-core processor paired with 256MB RAM and 512MB storage with support for microSD card slot. There are two SIM card slots, one of which doubles as a microSD card slot, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
It is surprising to see Xiaomi Qin Ai feature a USB Type-C port – a feature that is not widely adopted by budget phones let alone feature phones – and a 1,480mAh battery. Finally, there's a universal IR remote control feature to control your home appliances such as TV, AC and more.
Xiaomi is pulling a Reliance Jio in China, the world's largest market for smartphones, and it remains to be seen if the Qin Ai can be as successful as JioPhone in India. Stay tuned for updates.
