Reliance Jio is reportedly building a budget Android laptop

Reliance Jio is a major player in India’s low-cost smartphone space, but the ambitious firm is gunning for a new tech category. According to a new report by XDA, the company is developing a budget laptop tentatively referred to as the JioBook.

Powering the laptop is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 665 chipset, which should also enable 4G LTE connectivity via the Snapdragon X12 modem. The chip also packs the Adreno 610 GPU and Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 support. Early JioBook prototypes co-developed by Chinese firm Bluebank have reportedly featured up to 4GB of LPDDR4X RAM with 64GB of eMMC 5.1 storage.

Android on a budget laptop

As for software, Jio is set to skirt Chrome OS. Instead, it’s seemingly developing an Android fork dubbed Jio OS. XDA notes that the device firmware they surveyed didn’t sport any Google apps — it’s unclear if Google Mobile Services will feature in the final product. Jio did, however, add a number of its own and Microsoft’s apps and services to the machine as well.

As for the release date and price, we’re still in the dark. Based on production schedules, XDA believes the JioBook could debut in May 2021. When the machine does land, expect it to come in at an affordable price point like Jio’s other products.

Reliance Jio has high ambitions of securing 500 million subscribers in the next two years, and a budget LTE laptop will help get more internet users onto its network. And while it won’t gun for more premium Windows 10 and Chrome OS laptop players, it’ll likely give these OEMs something to think about should it find success.

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