Update: Earlier when we posted this article, Ringing Bell had up the wrong images of the Freedom 251 on their site. Since then, they’ve updated the page with the proper ones. Therefore, we’ve replaced the featured image found above and the reference image below with the proper ones. We apologize for the insufficient information found in this report earlier.
An indian company by the name of Ringing Bell has unveiled a smartphone that only costs $3.66 USD, which pretty much makes it the cheapest smartphone you can buy right now. The phone, called the Freedom 251, features a 4-inch qHD screen (960 x 540), a 1.3GHz quad-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage (which is expandable via microSD card up to an extra 32GB), and Android 5.1 Lollipop, which is very surprising since this phone costs less than your run-of-the-mill Starbucks coffee.
Of course, to get the price to as low as it is, Ringing Bell had to cut some corner… somewhere. And they did in the camera department like everyone else does who has a budget smartphone. This smartphone has a 3.2MP main camera and a 0.3MP front camera, so you’re obviously not getting iPhone-capable photos or videos out of this little guy, but since this phone costs less than a Happy Meal at McDonald’s, the camera really shouldn’t bother you. And if it does, return it.
Aside from the camera and other specs, the Freedom 251 has a 1450mAh battery built inside, which is kinda bad since this phone has a qHD display and a quad-core processor. My estimate is you can expect at most 3 hours of screen-on time from the Freedom 251. If they included, say, a 2000mAh battery, you could probably easily get about 4 hours of screen-on time.
This phone even includes 3G and a 1 year warranty, which is really nice to have in a phone that costs less than a charging brick at Five Below.
The Freedom 251 is set to go on sale tomorrow, February 18th, for $3.66 in USD and 251 Indian Rupees.
