As we’re all aware by now, the Freedom 251 smartphone turned out to be a sham. The makers of the smartphone, resellers to be precise, were unable to follow through on their promise of delivering a smartphone at Rs 251 to the Indian public.
Practically speaking, building such a smartphone was impossible to begin with. The bill of materials alone would place the cost of the device at over Rs 1,000 and despite claims of unnamed “partnerships” and tax breaks under the Make In India initiative, it would have been impossible to bring down the price of the smartphone and the plan fizzled out.
Reality struck a harsh blow to the company and it’s offices have since been shut down. The original owners have also quietly disappeared and at least one has been arrested.
It now appears that the company never gave up trying. We’ve learned that the company, now under new management, has taken a more realistic approach to the problem and have come up with yet another outrageous, but less ludicrous offer: A 4G feature for Rs 420 called the Freedom 420.
Laughable as the idea may seem, this new venture by the company might actually be more realistic. Chip makers and designers have started producing low cost 4G-ready platformsfor feature phones. The likes of Micromax and Lava are already working on 4G-ready feature phones, though they’ve only managed to bring the prices down to the Rs 1,000 mark themselves.
Freedom 420 is a Rs 420 feature phone that offers a 4.20-inch screen, 420 MB of RAM and 1 GB of onboard storage, of which only 420 MB is usable. A 4.20 MP camera is on the rear, but to cut costs, there’s no selfie camera. The battery is also rather small at just 420 mAh, but given that it’s a feature phone, battery life should rival that of an average smartphone anyway. Looking at the spec sheet, the inspiration for the name is clear.
Of course, the irony in the name also appears to have escaped the company.
Our sources in Delhi tell us that the phone will be made in India, and as with the Freedom 251 before it, the makers of the device are still betting on subsidies and the like from the government. The information wasn’t supposed to come out until 20 April this year, the date at which a grand unveiling was meant to happen.
Leaked images of the device are already making the rounds on social media and as you can see, we’ve managed to get our hands on one of them. We’ve been told that the device runs a heavily skinned, stripped down version of Android. Looking at the leaked images, however, we can’t help but wonder at the hubris that leads the makers to rip of iOS 6 in such a fashion.
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