After Freedom 251, stole the headlines on Wednesday for being the cheapest smartphone in the world, the manufacturer Ringing Bells have now made news for all the wrong reasons.
Following its much hyped launch on Wednesday amidst presence of union ministers, the website where the phones were to be sold from 6 AM since Thursday as stated earlier reported glitches.
Since early morning it remained a topic of discussion on Twitter with nearly 25, 000 mentions although most of them complaining of unprocessed orders despite repeated attempts.
The website was down at times with the following message stating that their servers were overloaded.
Dear friends, we are very grateful for your enormous response and your kind patronage and would submit that as of now we received approx. 6 Lacs hits per second as a result of your kind overwhelming response, servers are over loaded.
We humbly submit that we are therefore taking a pause and upgrading the service and will revert within or before 24 hours.
Once again our respectful thanks and gratitude for your support and patience. We look forward your return as soon as we are back online well within 24 hours.
However, this is not the only controversy it is involved with the phone that one can own for Rs.291.
An India Today report claimed that its second floor Noida office of Ringing Bells was empty but was manned by a security guard who was dealing with curious visitors just a day before its illustrious launch.
A Hindustan Times report elucidates numerous other flaws of the Rs 251 phone. It pointed out that the app icons of the Freedom 251 looked a carbon copy of that of iOS.
But one reporter aptly pointed out.
Dear reviewers writing about bad specs on #Freedom251 . Pls get the perspective. Shady owners? Maybe. But did u expect iPhone specs?
— Chandra R. Srikanth (@chandra86) February 18, 2016