After Reliance Jio saw immense response for its effectively free Jio Phone, others are set to follow suit. Vodafone India has come out with a bundled offer for an entry level smartphone targeted at the lower end of the spectrum; the feature phone users wanting to transition to using 4G VoLTE service on their handsets. So, Vodafone will offer an ‘Itel A20’, a Chinese phone at an effective price to the customer of just Rs 1,590. It is said the phone is actually priced at Rs 3,690 in the market.
The Itel A20, comes with a 4-inch WVGA display with a screen resolution of 480x800 pixels. A quad-core processor that offers a clocking speed of 1.3Ghz coupled with 1GB RAM run the phone and the internal storage is 8GB, which is quite decent and one can add a microSD card and expand the storage to 32GB. The higher internal storage has also to be understood from the perspective of the OS, which is the Android Nougat, version 7.0 and it would definitely take some space.
This is a dual SIM phone with one normal SIM and another micro. The 1700mAh battery is also appropriate for the size and usage for the phone. The optics section, however, has not received much attention with a 2MP camera in the rear and a 0.3MP VGA sensor in the front. Accelerometer, ambient light sensor and proximity sensor are the sensors on board. Buyers can choose from Champagne Gold, Dark Blue and Silver color variants.
Now, this Itel A 20 can be yours if you will have to stick to Vodafone as your service provider for 36 months and pick up a plan where you pay at least Rs 150 every month. You have the option to pay the entire amount in one go upfront as well. The cash back of Rs 2,100 (Rs 3,690 – Rs 1,590) will be made to you in 2 instalments: Rs 900 after 18 months and the balance Rs 1200 after the 36-month period. The cashback will be credited to the subscriber’s M-Pesa wallet and it can be used for any purpose, even to withdraw as cash.
Vodafone is going to keep this offer open till March 31 2018. Vodafone gets to generate customers for its M-Pesa wallet also through this route.
For the record, most other telcos in India, including the state-run BSNL have attempted this bundling route after Jio made its announcement of a phone which was not being sold but being taken back after a specific period. Bharathi Airtel with its Intex Aqua Lions N1 and BSNL, with is Micromax Bharat 1 did it. Vodafone itself has partnered with Micromax earlier offering a range of phones under the bundled scheme.