The much-awaited sale of Freedom 251, touted as world's cheapest phone, began today morning and with that has started the booking woes for consumers.
The Rs. 251 smartphone, which was on Wednesday evening unveiled by Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar as a Make in India initiative, was open for booking since 6 in the morning today. However, the website has not been able to take any booking requests.
People took to social media slamming the company Ringing Bells that is manufacturing the phone with assistance from the Indian government, which feels that cheaper smartphones will lead to a digital revolution in the country and will give impetus to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ambitious Startup India campaign.
Freedom 251 has been trending on micro blogging site Twitter for the last 12 hours. Initially, it trended for being the cheapest phone in the world and now for the company's inability to take online bookings. Many also alleged that smartphones at Rs. 251 was nothing but a marketing gimmick. They even compared the products with Government's another "failed" product Akash, which was also launched as the world's cheapest tablet at Rs. 2,500. The advertising and booking of Akash was similar to Freedom251.
Here are few tweets from people who wanted to book the smartphone but in vain.
"Okay, so you have to pay for the #Freedom251 now and the product will delivered after 4 Months? Am I the only one getting a bad feeling?" said one Twitterati
Yayyyyy #Freedom251 Finally BOOKED. . . . . . . . . . . Train Ticket for my week end Trip
#Freedom251 Type Your Address Type Your Address --> Pay Now Again Type Your Address Error : Refresh : Type Your Address
got up at 5:45. website up n running. at 6:00, website down. *sometime later* add to cart, enter address, refresh, repeat.. #freedom251
— LohithSK (@sklohith) February 18, 2016Refreshed the page more than 251 times.
Entered my address more than 251 times.
Clicked on "Pay Now" more than 251 times.
The developers of https://t.co/z6iLOwIQcc has replaced Pay Now button with refresh button. All it does is refresh the page :D #Freedom251
— Mittal Patel (@mittalpatel) February 18, 2016