A smartphone at Rs 251 was a jaw-dropping headline. Touted as the world’s cheapest smartphone, the price point naturally raised eyebrows – and hopes. Excitement was mixed with skepticism; through the day, there were more people asking questions than answering them. The topic has been trending on social media all day and has also sounded the alarm to a potential scam. Here are a few facts that have emerged in the past few hours.
Courtesy – Firstpost
1. A blatant rip-off of Apple
The icons, the home screen. The entire UI appears to be a rip-off of Apple’s iPhone. When asked about this, Ringing Bells’ technical head Vikas Sharma admitted they had used Apple’s icons, saying,“We have used Apple’s icons because Apple hasn’t copyrighted their designs.” It would appear that nobody at Ringing Bells read the news. The folks over at Apple probably do.
2. Website:
There are no contact details given on the website. There’s a contact form instead. The site has most of the details hardcoded which can, at best, be called amateurish. A simple whois query reveals that the domain was registered on 10 February 2016 and was updated on 14 February 2016: less than 10 days back.
3. Reselling without permission:
The product came with Adcom branding, which was hidden by a whitener and overwritten with “Freedom 251”. And Adcom is denying that fact that it is selling or even manufacturing the phone for Ringing Bells.
4. Delivery Date:
The delivery date was a good four months away (as mentioned on a website with no contact details). Another red flag seems to be the fact that Ringing Bells could have partnered with an online sales partner like Flipkart, Snapdeal or Amazon for pre-ordering the phone; all these sites have better scale for handling huge traffic that accompany pre-ordering. Another option was to put it up on crowdfunding sites like Indiegogo, Ketto or Wishberry to raise money to develop the product. we download twitter app and follow
instagram followers easily. They chose to go with their own not-so-shiny new website.
5. No personal money at stake:
When asked at the press conference held to announce the release of Freedom 251, if the promoters of Ringing Bells had personally invested in the company, they stated that the entire capital comprised equity and debt investment. The promoters, it seems, have very little to lose in financial terms.
6. Cost:
Current technology does not allow for a mobile phone to be manufactured at this cost. The bare minimum is around INR 3,800, even if it is subsidised. The company has made it clear that they have not received any subsidy, either from the government or any other third party for this project. The ‘magic formula’ remains a secret.
7. 650+ Service Centres:
Though the site claims to have over 650 service centres, there is no mention of even a single service centre, and nobody knows which cities they exist in, let alone their actual addresses.
8. More ‘promises’ in the making:
While cyberspace is already aware that bookings closed this morning and social media has been abuzz about people’s inability to book the phone on the Ringing Bells website, cyber cafe owners are apparently taking money from people gain traffic help of and giving them a receipt for booking the phone on their behalf, as suggested by
get twitter followers user Yatin Chawla in this tweet.
