The Freedom 251 looks like a fine entry-level smartphone with all the basic elements covered. And at that vulgar price of Rs 251, there is no room for complaints.
Back in December 2015, an unknown company called Ringing Bells took the nation and world by storm by announcing the world’s cheapest smartphone, the Freedom 251. Cheaper than many users’ data plans, the smartphone was promised at Rs 251. What started as nationwide curiosity, turned into spate of controversies, ranging from the company’s own credibility, suspicious pricing strategy and ultimately not being able to deliver a single Freedom 251 unit to anyone.
Cut to August 2016, the company announced delivery of 65,000 Freedom 251 smartphones, out of the two lakh units it had planned to deliver. But enough of the history of Ringing Bells, controversies and pricing strategy. Let’s talk about the real deal, the Freedom 251. The company has sent out a review unit of the device, and I spent some time with it. Here’s my first impressions of the world’s cheapest smartphone.
Last time around when I had used the Freedom 251 (the company called it later prototype) , it was a shoddy copy of an iPhone and was in fact a rebadged Adcom smartphone. Worse, the Adcom logo was covered by a whitener. But you can always win with that price tag, no matter how mediocre the smartphone felt.
Fortunately, the final version of the Freedom 251 looks much different, refined and better than the prototype shown to the media last year. I hid the Freedom 251 branding on the back panel, and asked a few people to guess the price of the smartphone, on the basis of its looks. Mostly people guessed the price to be between Rs 4,000 and Rs 7,000. Well, I assume a lot of people estimated it to be an entry-level smartphone, but no one could think it was a Rs 251 smartphone.
The exercise helped me realize that that the general idea for price of an entry-level smartphone is to start at Rs 4,000 approximately. And another important takeaway was that Ringing Bells had succeeded in keeping the look and feel like contemporary entry-level smartphones.
On the front, the smartphone has a 4-inch display along with front camera on the top panel and navigation buttons on the bottom panel. The power/lock/unlock button is on the right edge while the volume buttons reside on the left edge. The micro-USB and 3.5mm audio port are located on the top. It has a removable back panel underneath which is slots for SIMs (two mini-SIMs),a microSD card slot and a 1,450mAh removable battery. The back panel has rear camera sensor along with flash, and Freedom 251 branding and speakers on the bottom.
The smartphone is a bit thick, but pretty lightweight and compact. Edges are curved while the removable back panel doesn’t really feel very cheap. It fits well in your pocket, and is easy to carry around. And as I said earlier, at that price point, you cannot expect more and cannot complain.Read More
Hello, my name is Jack Sparrow. I'm a 50 year old self-employed Pirate from the Caribbean.
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