A smartphone company in India called Ringing Bells Pvt. Ltd. has just unveiled an Android smartphone called Freedom 251. It has all the features of a budget smartphone, except it is priced at only 251 Indian Rupees – roughly 175 Philippine Pesos or 4 USD, possibly making it the cheapest smartphone in the world available to consumers.
Freedom 251 will have a 4-inch IPS screen, a 3.2 MP rear camera, and a .3 MP front camera. It is powered by a 1.3 GHz quad-core processor and a 1450 mAh battery. It comes with 1GB RAM and 8GB of internal storage, expandable to 32 GB via SD card.
The device comes with Android 5.1 out of the box. It is also supported by 1 year warranty in over 650 service centers in India.
According to the Freedom 251 website, it will be India’s “first most affordable smartphone” by Ringing Bells, who claims to have a complete in-house product testing set-up in India.
The website describes Ringing Bells as “an amazing team of smartphone lovers who collaborate seamlessly to exchange technical and qualitative inputs and create quality products”
Interested buyers can reserve the Freedom 251 starting 6AM on February 18.
The extremely low price raises questions on the profitability of the business. We have attempted to contact Ringing Bells for more information.
In the Philippines, Cherry Mobile came out with the Cherry Mobile Astro back in November 2015, which has lower hardware specs but costs almost six times more at Php 999.
Freedom 251 technical specifications
| Display | 4-inch qHD IPS |
| SIM | 3G dual SIM |
| OS | Android 5.1 Lollipop |
| CPU | 1.3 GHz Quad-core Processor |
| Memory | 1 GB RAM / 8 GB ROM |
| Expansion | microSD, up to 32 GB |
| Camera | 3.2 MP Rear Camera, .3 MP Front Camera |
| Battery | 1450 mAh |
| Colors | white |
| Price | 251 Indian Rupees (4 USD or 175 Philippine Pesos) |