LYF FLAME 8

 

We have all been hearing about it for a while now. It felt like a rumour at times, at times like an urban legend and at other times like plain old wishful thinking. But ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it’s true! The LYF handsets with the bundled Reliance JIO offer will change your LIFE!

The LYF smartphone combined with the JIO network offers unlimited HD Voice & Video calling, unlimited SMS, unlimited High-Speed Data and a host of Jio Premium apps like JioPlay, JioOnDemand, JioBeats, JioMags, JioXpressNews, JioDrive, JioSecurity and JioMoney for a period of 90 days from the activation of the JIO SIM. The LYF Flame 8 has a 4.5-inch display with 480x854 resolution, primary camera of 8MP, front facing camera of 5MP, 1 GB RAM and 8 GB internal storage which can be expanded upto 128GB. The price at which the LYF handsets + JIO network has been offered is not just “Competitive” but one that will change the market and of how you think of mobile connectivity forever. The LYF FLAME 8 with JIO Preview can be bought from Flipkart for INR 4199, with EMI starting from INR 204 only. Before I get to my thoughts about the offer, let’s all take a moment and think about how the present is. Any “G” services from major providers come with their cons. 2G though cheap, almost never works enough to deserve any “G” in its name. “Net pack khatam!” and “Net slow hai!” are commonplace enough to deserve their own SMS abbreviations.

A friend of mine was so impressed by the device when he saw me use it that he went ahead and bought one for his sister as a gift for Raksha Bandhan. I admit what I’m saying sounds like one of those fake lottery emails on the internet. So, for the sake of both brevity and my credibility I better get right down to telling you all about the phone and the amazing pre-installed apps on it. Some of my favourites JIO apps are:

JIO PLAY:

I remember a time when cable television was a novelty. I remember countless times I’ve adjusted the dish antenna standing on the roof yelling “AB AAYA?” JIO Play my friends, is like an unexpected fantasy fulfilled. Instead of having to memorize the unique numbers of my favourite channels, I was able to search for what I wanted to see (“THE OLYMPICS”) that too without having to gp through useless ads and malware first. I searched for the “History Channel” and got it with zero buffering. The ease of access and the simplistic layout makes this “Idiot Box” Einstein.

JIO BEATS:

You know those times when you want to listen to music but either your connection is too slow or you don’t know what you want to listen to. JIO BEATS not only offers you everything the internet is going crazy about (read OST “Suicide Squad”) legally. It also has specially curated playlists according to genres. After telling my LYF FLAME 8 that I wanted to listen to Ghazals, I didn’t have to make another move for the next one hour. The variety along with the clarity (read bitrate) of the music on offer is a dream come true for any audiophile.

JIO ON DEMAND:

Jio on Demand claims having over a hundred thousand hours of Movies (Hollywood, Hindi and Regional), the latest trailers and popular TV shows (which you can watch back to back). I haven’t had the opportunity to be able to explore this feature as much as I would like to because the long weekend is still far, but believe you me, I’m looking forward to it like I look forward to my birthday. Zero buffering, unlimited choices and HD quality make life a whole lot easier when I am in the mood to watch movies.

 

TO CONCLUDE:

 

The phone comes with good packaging and the box contains the phone, stereo earphones, a data cable, a charger, a battery, the instruction manual and a phone cover. The packaging is pretty standard, but I especially liked the fact that a protective silicon transparent cover is provided.

The super-fast 4G VOLTE along with the easy user interface on the LYF FLAME 8 had me hooked from the very beginning. The way the phone handles the phenomenal speeds is not just “commendable” but it is outright surprising. I put it to good use by supporting our nation in the Rio Olympics. How? I watched P.V. Sindhu play, watched her win a Silver for our country and I firmly believe if LYF and Reliance continue to break new grounds as I believe they are, Mark Zuckerberg and his idea of free internet never need to step foot in our country ever. I don’t know if this is the appropriate forum to talk of patriotism but then again any  forum is appropriate to talk of it! Imagine a country, a billion strong, with seamless internet connectivity, at an affordable price, imagine what that collective conscience could achieve.

I am happy to have been able to tell you all of my experience using the LYF Flame 8 with Reliance GIO, as happy as anyone giving good news can be. Hope it helped.