The World’s Cheapest Smartphone is finally shipping this week. Believe it or not, there’s a four-dollar handset available from India. It’s not just ant ordinary brick phone that only knows text and call. It’s a real smartphone complete with a small 4-inch touch display screen, 8GB onboard storage, microSD card slot for storage expansion, 1GB RAM, 3.2MP rear camera, 0.3 front-facing camera, 1.3GHz quad-core processor, and 1800mAh battery. The specs are not really impressive but they are already “okay” for a handset that cheap.
We only knew of a $10 smartphone from Walmart but this one from India is the cheapest. Officially named as Freedom 251, this smartphone from Ringing Bells was designed as a purely Indian-made phone. The government of India offered support for its development as one of the efforts for the ‘Digital India’ program.
Ringing Bells’ Freedom 251 may not bring a long of profits per unit for the OEM but its CEO Mohit Goel hopes to earn some on volumes. More than the loss, Goel is happy to have made this dream into a reality. He said, “We will have a loss, but I am happy that the dream of connecting rural and poor Indians as part of the ‘Digital India’ and ‘Make in India’ initiatives has been fulfilled with ‘Freedom 251’.”
We noted before that we had no idea if it will have WiFi, 3G, or 4G/LTE but now we know it will be 3G-enabled. This means people in the rural areas may be able to afford the phone and have access to mobile Internet. It may not be speedy enough but it’s a real, working smartphone for the Indians who couldn’t afford the more expensive handsets.
The smartphone only runs on Android 5.1 Lollipop out of the box and will be available in white and black color variants. Shipping will start this coming Thursday, June 30.
VIA: The Indian Express
