Reliance isn’t just entering the 4G data network market with its Jio 4G services but they are making a presence even in the hardware segment with its smartphones. The Lyf series of smartphones have different sub-series such as Earth, Water, etc., and they are going to be quite interesting with not just the specs but the 4G offers they might carry along.
Let’s talk about the higher-end device from the company, Reliance Lyf Earth 1. The phone is going to get power from an octa-core processor, and there is 3GB RAM supporting it. Let’s talk about the device.
As we see, the Reliance Lyf phones are already on sale in India at the Reliance Digital stores. The price of Reliance Lyf Earth 1 is Rs. 23990. For the other stores, we aren’t sure whether they might be available online on any other stores than the website of Reliance Digital.
It is a chipset used in a smartphone that cost just Rs. 9000, but even in a smartphone worth Rs. 30000. Yes, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 was widely used in the year 2015. It is the same chipset that will power the Lyf Earth 1, and it is a very decent processor. To support that, there is 3GB RAM and 32GB internal storage, with a MicroSD card slot allowing for more storage by about 32GB.
The design isn’t sub-standard in any way, because the Lyf Earth 1 comes with a back glass panel and on the side is a 7.2mm aluminium alloy frame. Since it is the glass on the back, it looks good on the white variant. It is a Full HD AMOLED display under the 5.5-inch screen size.
The support for 4G LTE connectivity is for sure, but the bands supported are limited to Band 3, 5 and 40. Also as expected, there is support for Voice-over-LTE, and Reliance is adding support for seamless switching between voice calls and video calls. HD voice calling, Wi-Fi calling, and Multi Party Audio and Video Calling are also a part of the list of features related to its connectivity.
How about the camera combination? It is a very good combination on the paper though we aren’t sure how well would that be in reality. The back of the device has a combination of 13MP + 2MP cameras, where the 13MP camera will be for the normal capture while the 2MP camera will sense the depth-of-field and then let the users blur the background behind the focused object.
Some of the camera features that will help in a better use of the rear camera combination include ChromaFLash, Re-Focus, Fast Focus, Foregrounder, Optizoom. It is a technology called as Purecel that will help with image processing. The front of the device has a 5-megapixel camera.
The sensors you’d see in the phone include Ambient Light, Proximity, E-Compass, Accelerometer, and G-sensor. For the battery, it is a 3500 mAh battery powering the unit, and according to the listing, about 9 hours of video playback or 31 hours of audio playback is possible on a single charge of the battery on Reliance Lyf Earth 1.
What we still do not know, and are very keen to learn about is the 4G offers, if any. According to some earlier leaks, we heard that Reliance is going to offer the smartphone customers with a good amount of Reliance Jio 4G data across a few months. It was even said that it will be hundreds of GB of data given for free, but it is not an official news.
The other two phones that we know of right now, are the Reliance Lyf Water 1 and Water 2, which are priced quite low even though there are some similarities with the Earth 1 in terms of processor and the sensors.
