Here's my review of the phone and the network
Background :
I have changed upto 5 ISPs in last 8 years and had a pathetic experiance with each one of them. I work in online marketing and having a reliable internet connection is a must for my work, apart from that I am a regular consumer of entertainment. I don't even remember when I last enjoyed a great game of uncharted 2 and left 4 dead multiplayer. I didn't even got a chance to try GTA V multiplayer and streaming services were a dream.
Since many years I have been eyeing on reliance jio for its extraordinary promises and have very high expectations. But ever so extending deadline was making me very sad and frustated. until recently when I got to know about its closed public beta. I am very very greatful for Vaibhav for giving me this oppurtunity to be able to get to this network early on and relieving from my worries and frustation in past.
Buying Experiance :
As soon as I got invite in my email, I prepared the documents and got ready for getting the SIM card. I went to reliance digital express nearby my home and asked about the phone and sim. They confiremed that the Sim is available and were more than happy to sell the same to me.
There was slight problem with their network which was preventing them to registering the phone/sim. so they just processed the bill offline and asked me to come in the evening to collect the sim, I was probebly the first customer to get the Jio SIM from them as the store manager was constantly in touch with his superiors for directions. He took CAF and Docs and promised me to give the SIM by evening.
I took the LYF phone and left with goodbye.
By evening he got the SIM and completed the registering process, he told me the sim will take upto 5 days to activate so to be patient.
Activation Process :
I was very paranoid for this period of 3 days and was constantly wondering if its ever gonna activate or not. I was not getting any network and didn't received any SMS from Jio telling about televerification. thankfully after 3 days I received an SMS and called 1977 to complete the televerification.
After enabling the data I was redirected to some login page. I registered to my jio app as told by vaibhav and was able to access recharges from there. I activated EMP MiFi 25 GB Plan from there and in no time I was online.
The Network :
Initially the sppeds I got were very low (by jio standards) and the reason was poor coverage at my home.
to completly check the connection I went to rooftop and the speeds were quiet satisfactory
Sometimes during odd times the speeds drop to 0.5 Mbps levels for 1-2 hours, my assumption tells that this might be due to incompetent LYF phone (more on that later) but I had LTE with WiFi hotspot 24x7 so this could be due to that. I have decided to use jio as my primary internet and to achive maximum efficiency I kept the phone at roof with wifi hotspot and my asus repeater in the 1st floor to broadcast the wifi to all my devices. this way I get 16 mbps consistently throughout my home. The coverage outside is excellent too and never had <-101dBm around the city.
The battery consumption in the phone was more than the rate of charging thats why we had to give some charging breaks despite being connected to 10W wall charger all the time. we used to keep the phone over ICE to have thermals in check
I also tried the SIM on my friend's phone which worked great for DATA but no VoLTE, Also since then I have now got Huawei E5573s-606 MiFi hotspot and using the SIM on the MiFi device now. which is working great, although the signal is less than that of phone but quiet satisfied with the device until my repeater arrives.
While download speeds are decent, upload speeds are inversely proportional to the quality of download. this could be due to TDD LTE. As latency is good I didn't had any problem in gaming, but uploading videos and photos are like before If reliance is listioning please improve the upload this is the weakest point in the network.
Calling :
VoLTE is excellent for calling and almost as par with Skype in terms of calling. defenitely huge improvement from GSM calling. I had loved CDMA quality before but now this is the best. I haven't tried calling much but there were no drops even in low coverage area (in my home)
Other Issues :
I had received several calls from reliance employees asking for feedback and also they were wondering if everything's alright citing my unusual usage. In excitement I had used >100 GB data in last few days
I had explained the situation and they were ok with it and told me to contact them in case of any issues.
Experiance with Jio Apps:
JioPlay - This is the primary app I now use for watching television while out. I couldn't belive that the streaming is live and the HD quality is excellent there were few bugs here and there and the only bottleneck was the incompetent device I was using. There was no lag in streaming or changing channels.
JioBeats - I was using saavan for music streaming earlier and not satisfied with the library of jiobeats, but the ability to download songs/playlist without premium account comes handy. as I am already paying for saavan I decied to skip this.
JioMoney - Have used it for a online transaction and p2p transaction and it was an Ok wallet app, nothing fancy to talk about, but there were no bugs while transactions.
JioOndemand - I am trying to use the service on ipad/pc but not working. anyone who is able to use please guide me. I didn't liked the quality here but the library is decent and streaming is uninterrupted.
JioDrive - haven't used as I am already loaded with skydrive and dropbox. mainly use cloud drives for sharing photos and backing up important data. I might use JioDrive in future to mirror one of my important data folder. but the upload speeds are pathatic.
haven't tried JioXpressnews or JioMags yet so can't comment on them
Handset :
Lastly the Handset LYF Flame 1, is patheticly incompetent
It has been downgrade for me from redmi 1s! if it wasn't for the SIM I wouldn't have touched the phone even if I got for free.
The Screen is shit, the battery life is shit and lags like hell. Both slots support 4G though so that's a plus. Also the gloss back plate is very nice I got a silicon cover free with it for which I ain't complaining. It would be upgrade from only feature phone and at its price range there are many good options. But very few support VoLTE and 4G.
I like the camera though.
Thank You
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