Freedom 251: Cheapest smartphone rings in I-T raids, confusion

The income tax department raided the office of the controversial mobile phone company Ringing Bells in Noida on Friday and grilled its employees on the launch of "the world's cheapest smartphone" called Freedom 251.

The company has promised to deliver 25 lakh handsets by June 30, though it's not clear how a fledgling firm would be able to execute such a huge order apparently without any matching infrastructure.

Hundreds of eager buyers thronged outside the company's office on Friday. But the confidence of the firm's promoters seemed far from ebbing. "We will deliver the handsets that we have promised within the given timeframe," Mohit Goyal, the company's proprietor, told reporters. He said the company would also satisfy the government "on all counts".

Hundreds of people who had booked the phone demonstrated outside the Ringing Bells office as a three-member I-T department team rummaged through the company's documents.

Lakhs of people had logged on to the company's website to book the device which is being sold for as little as Rs 251 plus a Rs 40 charge for home delivery. The company's website crashed within a few minutes of its launch on Wednesday.

Interestingly, while the company had created a huge hype on 'Make in India' in its ads, most built-in app icons on the Freedom 251 are a direct copy of icons on Apple's iPhone. Even the web browser app is a copy of Apple's Safari browser that is the property of iPhones, iPads, and Mac computers.

The smartphone also sports a shiny logo of the import firm Adcom which, interestingly, sells an identical version of the phone for Rs 4,000 on its website.

The Freedom 251 device is also supposed to be pre-loaded with government apps.

However, market experts have raised their doubts about anyone being able to assemble a mobile phone, leave along a smartphone, at such a small cost. The experts say it's impossible to put together a mobile phone for anything less than Rs 3,000 by even the cheapest producers in China.

Source: Freedom 251: Cheapest smartphone rings in I-T raids, confusion