Yesterday all hell broke loose when it became public that an Indian company called Ringing Bells was going to launch a smartphone for just Rs. 500 or $7!
Everyone, including us, were wondering that at this price, it will have extremely low feature set.
The company revealed the details of the phone, and no one could have imagined what was in store. The company launched the smartphone for just Rs. 251 or roughly $3.80. At that price even a sub-par spec’ed smartphone would have been a surprise.
But the Freedom 251 has specifications of a smartphone that currently costs over 20 times in the market. The smartphone is a 1.3 GHz Quadcore phone packed with 1GB RAM. Not only that, the screen is a 4-inch screen with qHD IPS display.
The phone has a very decent 8GB internal memory expandable to 32GB. On the camera front it has a 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera and a VGA front.
With 1450 mAh battery, the smartphone will easily last you more than a day.
And that’s not all – the smartphone also has the latest Android lollipop 5.1 OS and comes with 1 year warranty!
This kind of smartphone currently costs upwards Rs. 5000 – and Freedom 251 is priced at just Rs. 251.
We have no idea how it is possible – and honestly, it is quite hard for us to believe.
Whatever way we think, the manufacturing cost of this phone itself cannot be less than Rs. 2500 to Rs. 3000 – so it is wonder how the company Ringing bell is able to sell this at such a low price!
Possibilities
The company has not mentioned anything about how they are able to price the Smartphone so low – but we think, it could be done with some tie-ups with app companies as well as with Government. The smartphone comes preinstalled with apps like Swachh Bharat, Fisherman, Farming related apps among other things.
It is possible that Government may have provided subsidy and other app companies may have offered them compensation for preinstalling apps. However, even in that case, the price is astonishingly low.
We still have doubts in our mind, and we are sure there is some catch. We will need to wait and see the reason behind such a low pricing.
Now, having said that – one thing is sure, if consumers are really able to buy this phone at Rs. 251, it will change the entire mobile ecosystem in India. Other handset brands will be left high and dry because no one will be able to sell their phones which are priced 20 times higher.
And if Ringing Bells is able to supply the demand for these phones, we will see India and Indians change drastically. Suddenly, we will have a billion people carrying smartphones and that’s really something!
CAclubindia
