A company comes from nowhere and announces a smartphone for Rs 251. Yes, we are talking about Ringing Bells’ Freedom 251 smartphone which was announced two days back. This kind of pricing has never been associated with a smartphone earlier.
The spec sheet of the Freedom 251 looks great on paper. It has Android 5.1 Lollipop operating system and a 1.3 GHz quad-core processor. Besides the phone has 8 GB of internal memory, 1 GB RAM, a 1450 mAh battery, 3.2-megapixel rear camera and a 0.3-megapixel front camera, and supports dual SIMs. The phone has a 4 inch IPS touchscreen and WVGA (800×480 pixels) resolution.
You can see the complete specs of the device here.
At the time of launch, I did spend some time with the device and here are my first impression of the device.
Pros
The Freedom 251 has a 4-inch qHD (960 x 540 pixels) IPS display and I have never seen such a display in any sub-Rs 2000 phone. It was bright and supported multiple viewing angels.
It looks quite good and was comfortable to hold and operate. The design of home button and apps, which is blatantly lifted from iOS, looked nice and gave a feeling of an ultra-affordable iPhone with iOS. Performing tasks such as switching between the apps was a smooth affair and navigation was lag free.
Cons
The camera of Freedom 251 is worth ignoring. The pictures that we shot through its rear camera were not even satisfactory and looked like the pictures we have on Adhaar card. On the back panel of the device India’s National flag has been imprinted but the paint was peeling off even during the brief amount of time I spent with the device.
We have also done a story about what things about the device are difficult to digest; you can click here to read the story.
Also, the device shown to us was a prototype and just above the display there was an Adcom logo, a Chinese handset manufacturer, that was covered with a white fluid. The reason for this is unknown.