Freedom 251 first look: Misleading specs on the box; but at Rs 251, you won't get a better phone

Ever since Noida based company Ringing Bells announced the Freedom 251, it has caught everyone’s attention. Repeatedly referred as a scam by authorities the company was also been charged with an FIR for false information. It is definitely hard to believe that a smartphone can sell for a mere Rs 251 but the company has managed to pull it off, well almost. At a recent press conference, the company had confirmed that it has indeed made 5000 units and even gave state wise information  as to how many of these units are actually shipping out to consumers. Well, we aren’t sure if customers have actually managed to get the smartphone, but a review unit has managed to reach us. So here’s a first look at the Freedom 251, but this time the final finished product.

Build and Design Unlike the first unit that was unveiled at the debut launch event, the finished product is much more refined and there are no paint jobs here. In fact it’s a completely different looking handset. It has a fully plastic build with a textured back. The display is a 4-inch panel with capacitive buttons sitting below it while the earpiece and front facing camera are placed above it. We didn’t see a light sensor or even a proximity sensor, of course at this price point one should not expect such things.

At the back there is 3.2MP camera with an LED flash and a loudspeaker at the bottom. The textured back panel comes off to reveal a 1,450mAh battery, two SIM card slots (a full sized and a micro) and a microSD card slot. On the right edge is the power button, the headphone jack and microUSB port are on the top edge while the volume buttons are on the left.

There isn’t a lot to the design, but again, when you consider the price it seems worth it. In fact it feels more like Rs 2,000 - Rs 3,000 smartphone.

Display The smartphone features a 4-inch LCD touchscreen display and according to the company and the box it has a qHD or 960x540 resolution. However, we noticed that the actual resolution on the display is 800x480. Colours look a bit over-saturated and viewing angles aren’t very impressive. The handset comes with MiraVision feature, which lets users customise the display’s contrast, colours, sharpness and even white balance.We expected a slow touch response but surprisingly it was as good as any budget smartphone. There are also a bunch of swipe gestures to open apps right from the locked lockscreen like swiping left opens the email app or making a ‘C’ gesture opens the camera. We couldn’t find a way to configure or shut it off though.

Hardware According to the company, the smartphone is powered by a 1.3GHz quad-core processor. With the help of some apps we found that it is a 32-bit MediaTek MT6580M with a Mali-400MP2 GPU which doesn’t sound all that bad. The company also mentioned that it has 1GB of RAM, even the box says so, but inside we only found 512MB.

Rest of the hardware includes 8GB of storage out of which about 4GB is accessible, but it can be expanded by using a microSD card. Connectivity hardware includes two SIM card slots, 3G connectivity, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and microUSB.

OS The smartphone runs on Android 5.1 Lollipop which is fairly stable. It is mostly stock but the UI is slightly different as there are some inbuilt themes that change the icons and wallpapers. There aren’t any interesting apps or any sort of bloatware and honestly we didn’t expect the OS to run smooth.  Of course, we haven’t installed a lot of apps on it yet so there is a high chance that it will slow down once the user starts populating the storage. There are certain times that the phone is a bit slow while opening apps or menus but still a commendable job in keeping the OS sane. Camera The company once again misleads by mentioning a 3.2MP camera sensor placed at the back which is actually a 2MP fixed focus camera. It is aided by an LED flash but it doesn’t offer much and honestly is not a very good shooter, although it can shoot 1080p videos. At the front there is a 0.3 or VGA resolution camera as well. Both the cameras are below average and produce pictures that are quite grainy.

Conclusion It isn’t a smartphone that one would ever buy, but when you put a price tag that is similar to a meal at McDonald’s, it is hard to not look twice. For the price, the Freedom 251 is quite something and we are sure that the actual cost of the smartphone is nothing less than Rs 1,500. This is exactly why the company could only manage to make 5000 of them and is seeking the government’s help in producing more units. It could easily make for a good backup phone, if not your primary or even secondary device. It seems unlikely that Ringing Bells will come up with more units but if it does, it could completely transform the tier-3 market and become a huge step for Digital India. For now, the Rs 251 smartphone is a dream that is still not fulfilled for many.