5-inch iBall Andi Uddaan with dedicated SOS button launched for Rs 8,999

Indian company iBall has added to its smartphone line-up but this one has been designed keeping in mind the safety concerns for women in India. Dubbed Andi Uddaan, the company calls the phone a “perfect blend of security and style”.

It has a dedicated and exclusive SOS button on the back, which when activated blares out a loud siren that alerts the people nearby of the danger, and also calls and sends messages to five pre-defined contacts. The smartphone sends a message alerting of an emergency situation to the pre-defined contacts along with the location of the person based on your coordinates. The phone also sends out a Facebook update to alert your friends. The Uddaan comes pre-installed with an application called ‘ICE - In case of Emergency’ that allows the user to add vital details like blood group, medical history, details of persons to be contacted during an emergency situation.

Built especially for women

The Andi Uddaan also enables GPS tracking by up to 10 people. One can view the location of the person or can get the updates at pre-defined intervals. It also facilitates the addition of two geo-fences for receiving custom alerts. User can define the geo-fence on map location and the user can programme the phone to send alerts by mail or SMS when they enter or exit the fence area.

More from News & Analysis

What is the US HIRE Bill and why is India’s $250-billion IT sector worried? Is the internet dead? What's this theory that OpenAI's Sam Altman says might be true?

iBall Andi Uddaan features a curved glass touch panel and its back cover is made with in-mould textured lamination. Just to drive home the fact that this phone is designed for women, iBall has fitted a Swarovski Zirconia crystal on the home button. The wallpaper in the press images was a stereotypical pink and the SOS button on the back is heart shaped.

The smartphone sports a 5-inch qHD IPS display and runs on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. Under the hood, one will find a dual-core 1.3GHz Cortex-A7 processor and 512 MB RAM. It gets 4GB onboard storage and the microSD card slot takes in cards up to 32GB in size. It also includes a 2000mAh battery. On the camera front, it gets an 8-megapixel rear camera and 5-megapixel front-facing camera.

iBall Andi Uddaan will be available across the nation in the next two weeks. It is available at an introductory price of Rs 8,999, and marked with an MRP. of Rs 10,990. iBall also claims to bundle accessories worth Rs 1,199 such as a flip cover, an extra back cover, a pink carrying purse and a scratch guard.