The Indian Express reports that deliveries of the Freedom 251 will begin on June 30, just in time to meet Ringing Bells’ original promise of shipments by the end of June. Founder and CEO Mohit Goel told the newspaper the company is “ready” with the first batches of handsets and will soon open pre-orders for the next delivery waves.
When the Freedom 251 was announced in February, Ringing Bells promised a “true testimony of success” for India’s Made In India digital campaign. However, what was supposed to be “a revolution in the industry” quickly turned sour. Ringing Bells came under investigation when it was discovered the $5 phone cost at least $40 to make.
What came next was even more interesting. Early review samples shipped to the media looked nothing like the device on the website. The handsets were obvious iPhone clones using a skinned version of Android. On top of everything else, it was soon established these devices were illegally rebadged Adcom Ikon 4 smartphones, $50 devices from China.
Goel claims the mess has now been cleaned up. He said the company will be losing money on every handset sold but thinks it will make a profit in volume. Ringing Bells wants to connect India to the digital world and is prepared to sell devices for less than their worth to do so.
“We learned from our mistakes and decided to go silent till we come out with the product,” said Goel. “Now we have a 4-inch, dual-SIM phone ready for delivery. I feel vindicated.”
Assuming the finished product has the same specs as originally stated, the phone is surprisingly powerful for the cost. Its 4-inch 960×540 display sits atop a 1.3GHz quad-core processor. While it won’t be setting any performance benchmarks, the chip is paired with a respectable 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage. The phone runs Android 5.1 Lollipop.
The original device was slated to have a mediocre 3.2MP rear camera and 0.3MP front one. Ringing Bells has managed to find better sensors in the past few months though. Finished devices will ship with an 8MP main camera and 3.2MP front one. The battery capacity has also been increased up to 1,800mAh. It’s comparatively small but with only modest hardware to power it could get the phone through a day’s use.
Ringing Bells hopes to ship 2.5 million orders by the end of the month and then settle down to 200,000 handsets each month. Over 70 million people registered for the device back in February, crashing the website after just a few days. Ringing Bells may be working through the backlog for some time to come.
With the device set to reach customers by the end of the week we’ll soon know how a $4 smartphone performs. Even if Ringing Bells is making a loss on each handset, the Freedom 251 represents a benchmark for affordable devices, giving more people in India their first access to the Internet.