Google announces IDR 99,000 ($7) ‘smart feature’ phone for Indonesia with full voice assistant integration

Screenshots: Google Indonesia / Youtube
Screenshots: Google Indonesia / Youtube

Despite Indonesia’s growing and increasingly digitized economy, many here are still unable to benefit from the wealth of information, services and convenience now available online due to their inability to afford a smartphone. But, with the help of Google, a new “smart feature” phone will soon be launched here that should make mobile access to powerful Internet tools an affordable option for the vast majority of Indonesians.

Yesterday, the local branch of the international tech powerhouse held their annual Google For Indonesia event at Ciputra Artpreneur Center in Jakarta to unveil what the company has achieved and what it has planned for the archipelago. Among the speakers was Scott Huffman, the company’s vice president in charge of engineering for Google Assistant, the company’s voice-driven, AI helper app.

Huffman said one of the company’s goals was to make Assistant more easily accessible to more Indonesians, and one way they are doing that is through the Wizphone, a feature phone that will have many smartphone like capabilities, many of which can accessed through the phone’s tight integration with Google Assistant — all users need to do to use it is press the phone’s dedicated microphone button.  

(Huffman starts talking about the Wizphone at the 112 minute mark of this video)




 

Best of all, Huffman said the Wizphone, which is being manufactured in Indonesia by a local mobile device company of the same name, will only cost IDR 99,000 (US$7) — which Hoffman joked was about the cost of a box of martabak.

The device, officially called the WizPhone WP006, runs on KaiOS, a Linux-based mobile operating system that aims to merge the power of smartphones with the affordability of feature phones. Google made a US$22 million deal with KaiOS the company earlier this year to help bring more of their services to cheap feature phones.

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According to a press release from KaiOS, the WP006 will be “the first KaiOS-powered 4G smart feature phone in Indonesia and the most affordable device running on KaiOS that is currently available in open markets”.

According to KaiOS’s spec sheet, the WPOO6, will run on a Qualcomm MSM8905 Dual Core 1GHz CPU, support Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS and be able to run a full range of apps including games, messaging, streaming apps, and social media. It will have both a rear 2MP rear camera and a front-facing VGA camera, internal storage of 4GB and standby battery life of 250 hours.

 

Part of the reason the phone is so affordable is because of the unique business model behind it, designed in conjunction with partner and Indonesian convenience store mega-chain Alfamart. According to the release, “Customers can get a WizPhone WP006 from vending machines at more than 10,000 Alfamart stores for just USD$7 (IDR99,000). Then, with the built-in AllWizapp, customers can unlock shopping benefits in Alfamart by scanning barcodes on each product and making their purchase directly via the app on their WizPhone.”

Google helped to make sure that the WP006 will be able to run many of its key services, giving users easy access to not only Google Assistant but also Google Maps and Google Search.

In addition to the WizPhone, Hoffman noted in his presentation that his team has been working to make Google Assistant easier and more useful to use for Indonesians. The app got full Bahasa Indonesia integration back in April, and the Google VP noted that it has new features that should be particularly convenient for those in Indonesia such as being able to book rides with ride-hailing apps though a simple voice command — an example he gave was “Book a Go-Jek to the National Gallery of Indonesia” which automatically put the order into the Go-Jek app (that particular function only works in English at the moment, but Indonesian support would be coming soon, Hoffman promised).

KaiOS says the WP006 will launch in the first quarter of next year and it looks like it will be an Indonesia exclusive and possibly the cheapest “smart” phone on the planet. There’s another similar KaiOS phone being launched in South Africa soon but that will cost around US$20.



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