Ringing Bells, a seemingly unknown company has created quite a buzz among India smartphone consumers by launching a smartphone that costs Rs. 251/- only. Touted as the world's cheapest smartphone, Freedom 251 is offers a decent package at price that is cheaper than a decent smartphone case.
For those who haven't heard, Freedom 251 is powered by a 1.3GHz quad-core processor (exact SoC is not yet known, most probably it's a Mediatek with ARM a7 cores), and sports a 4-inch qHD (Quarter HD not to be confused by QHD which is Quad HD) IPS display. It comes with 1GB RAM and 8GB internal memory, which can be expanded up to 32GB via microSD card.
It also features dual cameras, the a 3.2MP rear shooter with LED Flash and a 0.3MP front shooter. The phone comes with Android 5.1 Lollipop, and packs in a 1,450mAh battery. Connectivity options include Dual SIM 3G, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth, and GPS.
Agreed, these are not the kind of specs to boast about, but the sub 4$ price is what makes it special. The price is also one of the most controversial aspect of this phone, which has everyone asking, is a phone at this price is possible? Has this relatively unknown done what seemed impossible, by giving a smartphone to every India? Or is it just another scam, trying lure customers with a promise of a phone at price cheaper than 1GB of 3G data in India? Let's try to find out-
According to their own website, Ringing Bells Pvt. Ltd was setup in 2015, a quick web search shows 16th September to be exact. And within a span of around 5 months, the company has launched four handsets. These include Smart 101, Master, 4u and Freedom 251. Out of these these handsets Master and 4u are feature phones. The Bell Master is priced at Rs. 999 and Bell 4U is priced at Rs. 799.
Now, we look at their other offering, Smart 101. Which the company claimed to be the cheapest 4G phone in the world. It was launched with some hype by the company, a 4G that costs only Rs. 2999/-, yes it was cheapest phone in the market as well. But till the date of publishing this article, not even a single one of those phones have been delivered to public.
Now, let's have a closer look at their website shall we? Their website has crashing since they announced the prices for their phone. Their site when it initially went up actually had images borrowed from it's elder and seemingly non-existent sibling the Smart 101. They were replaced, before anyone realized. We used the Wayback machine for any archieves, and luckily we found what we were looking for.
Now, it's look at the another aspect. The authenticity of the handset. If the company claims that the updated pictures are actual pictures of the handset, than they look identical to a little known handset Adcom Ikon 4. The Ikon which is readily available on Flipkart costs around Rs. 3700/-. Also the handset provided by the company to select journalists at the launch even were Adcom Ikon 4s with Adcom logo in from hidden by white pain & the logo at back scratched & superimposed by Indian Tricolor flag.
Now this begs a question that how can a company sourcing products from a another company can sell it at lower price compared to the original company? And on closer inspection the specs also appear different from the Ikon 4 product that is being distributed to journalists.
The absurd logic behind this pricing is given by Ringing Bells's president Ashok Chadha and CEO Mohit Goel is, quote "By making in India, this price goes down by Rs 400. Then we will sell online only. So, this pulls down the price by Rs 400 further. We are sure that this smartphone will be in a lot of demand. We are assuming to save around Rs 500 from this economy of scale. At last, we wait for our platform to grow, so that we can make money from other services". The Ringing Bells also expects to earn profits from this venture and this is without any subsidy from Government. This doesn't make any sense, first Make in India cannot take prices to such low levels. Considering most components like Display, Printed Boards, Memory, Camera etc... are not manufactured in India. So these components need to be imported & merely assembling these components in India won't help. In case you didn't know Foxconn has already started assembling in India, and many Chinese manufacturers like Xiaomi, Gionee, Coolpad are already assembling in India, which hasn't brought down prices lower than before.
This company also has an impeccable record of not delivering a single product till date (except the demo units).
Even the Govt. got suspicious with such claims, and the Income Tax department conducted raid at their office in Noida. This bad run continued and even the call center that supported Ringing Bells has sued them for not paying for the services. Than final nail in Freedom 251 dream happened when company finally announced that they are refunding all the money and will deliver it as Cash on Delivery mode. Our take on this is that, Ringin Bells still won't deliver phones for Rs. 251/- but CoD will make them less liable for delivering phones. People will soon forget about Freedom 251 and since no such phone ever existed or will eer exist.
For those who haven't heard, Freedom 251 is powered by a 1.3GHz quad-core processor (exact SoC is not yet known, most probably it's a Mediatek with ARM a7 cores), and sports a 4-inch qHD (Quarter HD not to be confused by QHD which is Quad HD) IPS display. It comes with 1GB RAM and 8GB internal memory, which can be expanded up to 32GB via microSD card.
It also features dual cameras, the a 3.2MP rear shooter with LED Flash and a 0.3MP front shooter. The phone comes with Android 5.1 Lollipop, and packs in a 1,450mAh battery. Connectivity options include Dual SIM 3G, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth, and GPS.
Agreed, these are not the kind of specs to boast about, but the sub 4$ price is what makes it special. The price is also one of the most controversial aspect of this phone, which has everyone asking, is a phone at this price is possible? Has this relatively unknown done what seemed impossible, by giving a smartphone to every India? Or is it just another scam, trying lure customers with a promise of a phone at price cheaper than 1GB of 3G data in India? Let's try to find out-
According to their own website, Ringing Bells Pvt. Ltd was setup in 2015, a quick web search shows 16th September to be exact. And within a span of around 5 months, the company has launched four handsets. These include Smart 101, Master, 4u and Freedom 251. Out of these these handsets Master and 4u are feature phones. The Bell Master is priced at Rs. 999 and Bell 4U is priced at Rs. 799.
Both these seemingly common feature phones by the same company costs more than their new Smartphone. And at these price range, we could easily find brands offering similar phones.
Now, we look at their other offering, Smart 101. Which the company claimed to be the cheapest 4G phone in the world. It was launched with some hype by the company, a 4G that costs only Rs. 2999/-, yes it was cheapest phone in the market as well. But till the date of publishing this article, not even a single one of those phones have been delivered to public.
Now, let's have a closer look at their website shall we? Their website has crashing since they announced the prices for their phone. Their site when it initially went up actually had images borrowed from it's elder and seemingly non-existent sibling the Smart 101. They were replaced, before anyone realized. We used the Wayback machine for any archieves, and luckily we found what we were looking for.
Compare the above handset with the handset in the picture below
Now, it's look at the another aspect. The authenticity of the handset. If the company claims that the updated pictures are actual pictures of the handset, than they look identical to a little known handset Adcom Ikon 4. The Ikon which is readily available on Flipkart costs around Rs. 3700/-. Also the handset provided by the company to select journalists at the launch even were Adcom Ikon 4s with Adcom logo in from hidden by white pain & the logo at back scratched & superimposed by Indian Tricolor flag.
Now this begs a question that how can a company sourcing products from a another company can sell it at lower price compared to the original company? And on closer inspection the specs also appear different from the Ikon 4 product that is being distributed to journalists.
The absurd logic behind this pricing is given by Ringing Bells's president Ashok Chadha and CEO Mohit Goel is, quote "By making in India, this price goes down by Rs 400. Then we will sell online only. So, this pulls down the price by Rs 400 further. We are sure that this smartphone will be in a lot of demand. We are assuming to save around Rs 500 from this economy of scale. At last, we wait for our platform to grow, so that we can make money from other services". The Ringing Bells also expects to earn profits from this venture and this is without any subsidy from Government. This doesn't make any sense, first Make in India cannot take prices to such low levels. Considering most components like Display, Printed Boards, Memory, Camera etc... are not manufactured in India. So these components need to be imported & merely assembling these components in India won't help. In case you didn't know Foxconn has already started assembling in India, and many Chinese manufacturers like Xiaomi, Gionee, Coolpad are already assembling in India, which hasn't brought down prices lower than before.
This company also has an impeccable record of not delivering a single product till date (except the demo units).
Another controversial move done by the company is that such a hyped phone is using icons copied from Apple's iOS Operating System. The original phone Ikon also uses the copied icons, so we thought since this is just a demo unit like company was referring this may be fixed in retail units. But the company went on to defend the move by declaring "We used Apple’s icons because Apple hasn’t copyrighted its designs". A company like Apple that even sued people for by patenting rectangles with rounded corners, can you imagine it committing such grave mistake.
Even the Govt. got suspicious with such claims, and the Income Tax department conducted raid at their office in Noida. This bad run continued and even the call center that supported Ringing Bells has sued them for not paying for the services. Than final nail in Freedom 251 dream happened when company finally announced that they are refunding all the money and will deliver it as Cash on Delivery mode. Our take on this is that, Ringin Bells still won't deliver phones for Rs. 251/- but CoD will make them less liable for delivering phones. People will soon forget about Freedom 251 and since no such phone ever existed or will eer exist.
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