New Delhi: Giving a major boost to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Make in India’ and ‘Digital India’ initiatives, Noida-based start-up Ringing Bells has launched world’s cheapest smart phone.
The Rs 251 smartphone was officially launched by Bharatiya Janata Party MP Murli Manohar Joshi at Nehru Park here on Wednesday evening.
Ringing Bells president Ashok Chadha while speaking to the media post the launch, highlighted the potential use of the phone to empower citizens in rural and semi-urban areas.
The phone can be booked online from 6 a.m. today until Saturday but units may be delivered as late as June 30, Chadha said.
“The chipset will be imported from Taiwan at present, the rest of Freedom 251 would be made in India. The goal is to make up to 75 percent of the hardware in India by the end of one year, and to raise this to 100 percent over time,” Chadha said.
” To accomplish this, the company is looking at investing in two manufacturing plants in Noida and Uttaranchal immediately as a pilot project at an estimated cost of Rs. 250 crore each,” he added.
He also confirmed that there is no government subsidy for the phone, and nor is there any involvement from the government.
BJP MP Murli Manohar Joshi after unveiling the phone told the gathering that such innovation would empower women and people from rural areas.
“Unless India innovates and makes something new, it cannot progress. It is a great news for people like fishermen, farmers and women from rural areas who can use this technology to empower their lives. But technology that is cheap should also still be useable, cheap by itself is not enough,”Joshi said.
The Ringing Bells Freedom 251 runs on Android 5.1, with a 4-inch display, a quad-core 1.3GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, and 8GB of storage (expandable to 32GB). The smartphone has a 3.2-megapixel primary and a 0.3-megapixel front camera.
The device has 3G connectivity and has a 1.3GHz quad-core processor, 1GB RAM and 8GB internal memory and supports external memory cards of up to 32GB.
The smartphone comes with pre-installed apps like Swachh Bharat, Women Safety, WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter, among others. (ANI)