AmanThe Indian company Ringing Bells launched the world’s cheapest phone Freedom251 a couple of days ago in India and got huge media coverage as the cheapest Android phone. The Freedom 251 phone was launched for just $4 or INR 251 and received a huge response from customers with over 30,000 phone orders on day 1 and the company claimed that they have received over 3.70 crore registrations on Day 1 and 2.47 crore on Day 2. But looks like the company is a scam as it has not registered with Indian government and Google’s Android.
The company behind the Freedom 251 phone first changed the device image on their website to a crappy looking 4-inch phone with a single central key from a nice looking thin bezels 4-inch smartphone, just after the launch of the phone. More doubts about the phone were created when the prototypes review units were handed to the media persons. The shipped review units of Freedom 251 were the Adcom phones having their logos above front display covered by fluid. In the launch event, the Noida based company has claimed that it will be an India made phone but that was not true as Adcom is a Chinese company.
The shipped dummy phone was reportedly running an iOS like software with some icons similar to the iOS default icons and is not looking like an Android smartphone that they are advertising on their website and in a reply, the company said that the UI on the prototype is not identical to Apple and a custom designed UI will be available in the final Freedom 251. Additionally, the promised pre-loaded apps for Fisherman, Farmers and Women’s Safety were not present on the device shipped to media representatives. The company said that these apps will be present in the final Freedom 251.
Even the HQ of the Ringing Bells was found to be empty when some journalists approached the company for answers of their questions. The Ringing Bells company is not even a registered Google Android partner and is not certified by BIS (Bureau of Indian Standards) in India about which the company is claiming that their application is currently under filing. Meanwhile, the Indian Cellular Association has expressed serious concerns over the launch of the smartphone and has also written a letter to the Indian Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad to get into depth of the issue.
The Freedom 251 was launched with a 4-inch WVGA IPS display with a 1.3 GHz quad-core processor and 1GB of RAM. It has 8GB of internal storage with expandable SD card support. It runs on Android 5.1 Lollipop OS and features a 3.2 megapixel auto-focus rear camera with a 0.3 megapixel front camera. This device has a 1450 mAh battery.
Many people are calling it a scam but the company behind the phone is refusing every allegation. Many people have ordered the phone online from the freedom 251 website and are felling scammed by the company. But let’s wait for some more reports about the company before declaring it as a scam.
Stay tuned for more news and updates.
Mckay Jonson
