Wonders will never cease! An Indian firm is set to surprise the world by shipping the first $4 Android smartphone to the rest of the world.
The Freedom 251 smartphone is made by Indian firm Ringing Bells and while it might be that cheap, you will be surprised at the amazing spec sheet the phone comes with. Of course, it is nothing closer to the Samsung Galaxys and iPhones of this world, but for such a price tag, there is no better deal.
Apparently, the controversial Freedom 251 phone is not what you’d really call a $4 smartphone. While it is true that Ringing Bells is letting go of the phone for about Rs. 251, which is translates to something slightly below $4, the Indian Times reveals that there is more to this deal. The company is ion agreement with several other firms that deal in software such that they can have their apps placed on the phone in a bid to bring in more revenue.
As a result, Ringing Bells is expected to make a loss of about Rs. 150, which is slightly above $2 on each unit sold for $4. But with the continued selling of more apps on the phone, the company hopes that it will be able to recoup a larger part of its initial losses.
Rumors about this phone have been in the air for quite some time now. In fact, Ringing Bells used another common phone – Adcom Ikon 4 – that appears in the sub-$100 price category as a prototype of this $4 Freedom 251 smartphone, but somehow covered the name of the former with Wite-Out. Interestingly, the spec sheet of the Freedom 251 smartphone is very similar to what you get with the Adcom Ikon 4, which has a price tag of $54.
For $4, the Freedom 251 will offer you a decent 4-inch QHD IPS display screen with 960 by 540 pixels of resolution. Under the hood, the 251 will be powered by a capable quad-core MediaTek SoC that is clocked at a speed of 1.3GHz and is paired with a Mali 400 GPU as well as a decent RAM of 1GB.
It gets even better as the phone will also be coming in with 8GB of onboard storage, which will be expandable via a microSD card slot. As for the camera specs, the phone’s rear will feature a 3.2MP snapper that is accompanied by an LED flash whereas the front part has a 0.3MP snapper. To keep the 4-inch display powered, the Freedom 251 smartphone will come with a 1450mAh battery unit. The phone supports dual-SIM capabilities and is equipped with Android 5.1 Lollipop out of the box.
Of course, this spec sheet is outshone by many other devices out there. However, you won’t get any other smartphone with a $4 price tag apart from the Freedom 251. The phone is expected to here as from June 30th, but there are no details on its international availability.
What do you think about this phone? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.