Freedom 251: Freedom 251 is smartphone Manufactured by Ringing Bells Private Limited and was marketed as the cheapest smartphone in the world with a price tag of only 251/- rupees. The promotional price was offered at online booking only between 18th to 21st February 2016 only. Traffic was so high on the first day of the sale that website got crashed. At the point, website has crashed the company claimed to taken bookings for 30,000 mobile phone at the price of 251 rupees
Specifications:
The phone has a screen size of 4.0 inch IPS display, Qualcomm 1.3GHz quad-core processor,1GB RAM and 3.2 MP rear camera. The smartphone comes with 8Gb of internal memory and supports the external storage of 32Gb.
Pricing:
There is a strong disbelief among the smartphone market that anybody can make a smartphone with above-mentioned specification for 251 rupees. President of Indian Cellular Association Pankaj Mohindroo said that this pricing is not possible under any circumstances even if the components are made in India. He said the bill for material for a product like this would be around 3500 rupees. Although as per president of Ringing Bells the price would be achieved by manufacturing in India by which they can save the import duty.
Review :
The world’s cheapest smartphone has been receiving criticism from consumers and media for over promising features of the phone but the Freedom 251’s amazing price is enough to overlook its drawback.
COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT:
Most built-in app icons on the Freedom 251 are a direct copy of icons on Apple’s iPhone. Even the web browser app is a rip-off of Apple’s Safari browser that only exists on iPhones, iPads, and the Mac.
Phone Delivery:
Since the response of the phone was so humongous that the company itself was not expecting. On the very first day of the online sale, the website got crashed and the company claims to receive 3000 orders out of which they can only fulfill the order of 5000 units in the given time. The company had to provide refunds to around 25,000 customers and issued the statement that customer can make the payment after they received the phone. Recently the company’s MD Mohit Goel has put out a statement claiming that the company has delivered 70,000 phones to the customer
Expectation Vs Reality :
According to a report, Ringing bell got a total of 70 million registration and many who booked the phone are yet to receive their phone. It is said to be one of the biggest disappointment in the field of technology in India. It is also the set back for the government which promoted the project as “Make in India” and “Digital India”. The company has totally failed to keep its promises it made before launching the phone. There were also reports of the resemblance of Freedom 251 with another handset Adcom Ikon 4s another Delhi based company which got shut down few months before the release of Freedom 251. Since the customer support of the unavailable and there is no touch with company’s representative it is hard to believe whether the company is still functioning or not.
