The first look says it all

The Freedom 251 Smartphone, the Noida-based technology company Ringing Bells Pvt. Ltd. claimed, has come onto the market. As the name suggests, it costs ₹ 251, and is now bookable on In fact, the company charges a shipping fee of ₹ 40, which means that you will ultimately have to pay for the Freedom 251, ₹ 291. They claim that the phone will be delivered “within 4 months” from the booking date. Currently, you can only buy the Freedom 251 through this website and not from other e-commerce platforms or offline stores. Considering that this phone is targeted at an unconnected demographic, does it really make sense to sell it only online?

On paper, the specs looked pretty interesting – a 1.3GHz quad-core processor, 1GB RAM, Android 5.1 (Lollipop) operating system, a 4-inch display (960 x 540 pixels), 8GB internal storage with micro SD card slot, dual SIM, 3.2MP camera and a 1450mAh battery. But there's a catch, actually several: the review unit we got wouldn't turn on, even though we followed all the troubleshooting steps and the phone's battery was fully charged.

It's quite a shock to see a review unit of a smartphone that has used white paint/whitener to hide some branding on the front of the device. But that's exactly what Ringing Bells did with the Freedom 251 phone we received. But why would someone use whitener to hide any branding?

By the way, the glass above the screen attracts fingerprints and is highly reflective.

The answer to the above question can be found in this image. While Ringing Bells claims to manufacture the Freedom 251, at least the phone we received is made by IT peripherals and smartphone maker Adcom. Perhaps that explains why the name has to be kept secret in the hope that no one notices. Ringing Bells has not yet answered our questions about the Adcom connection.

There's pretty conventional stuff here – a removable battery, two SIM card slots and a memory card slot. The back is made of plastic.

These are the dual SIM slots and the memory expansion slot that supports a micro SD card.

Ringing Bells claims that the Freedom 251 has a 1450mAh battery. The battery itself says 1500mAh. We really don't know what to believe.

The Indian national flag is painted on the otherwise white back.

Very simple packaging of the Freedom 251. The package contains a set of earphones and a charger.

The patriotism seemed to wear off pretty quickly. The Indian flag painted on the back had faded before we even used the phone.

The home button below the screen gives it an iPhone-like look. But that's about it.

We have gained access to another copy of the Freedom 251 and can get a first brief impression of its usability and performance.

Thanks to its 4-inch screen, the phone has a fairly compact footprint. The decision to include a physical home button is also surprising considering Android otherwise offers on-screen navigation that doesn't even require users to leave the touchscreen to switch between apps.

Many icons (such as web browser, calculator, camera, and email) are taken unchanged from Apple's iOS operating system for iPhones and iPads. We're not entirely sure if Apple allows this, and this could potentially expose the makers of Freedom 251 to legal action.

Our first impression of the device suggests that the 1.3GHz quad-core processor paired with just 1GB of RAM still does a pretty acceptable job in terms of performance. We found that switching between apps was pretty smooth and even when we had 5-6 apps open in the background, the newer ones opened without much lag.

Some more system details about the Freedom 251.