Affiliate links on Android Authority may earn us a commission.Learn more.
The saga of the $4 smartphone is getting ridiculous
July 06, 2025
If you had lingering doubts that the so-called“$4 smartphone”is anything more than a poorly conceived publicity stunt, the events of these days should clear them up.
Back in February, Ringing Bells, the company that claims to be manufacturing the world’s cheapest smartphone, promised it would ship 2.5 million units of the Rs. 251 Freedom 251 by the end of June. Thenthe figure went down to 200,000 unitsand the deadline slipped successively from June 28, to June 30, to July 6, and now, July 8.
It’s not just the shipping date that keeps getting adjusted. Mohit Goel, the shady CEO of Ringing Bells, went from promising an initial batch of 200,000 units, to 10,000 units, and then 5,000 units in a matter of days.
Just to put things in perspective, Ringing Bells said it collected70millionregistrations for the device in February.30,000 people supposedly paid for the phone.
Surely, Ringing Bells just needs time to gain momentum, right? Well, not quite. The company alsobacktrackedon Goel’s promise to ship 200,000 Freedom 251 units every month. Instead, after the first batch, the company may ship… zero devices.
What is this help that Ringing Bells is talking about? Oh, glad you asked! Mohit Goelsent an open letter to the Indian Prime Ministerasking for financial support to put a Freedom 251 in the hands of 750 million Indian citizens. Here’s an excerpt:
A noble plan to be sure, but there’s a problem: Ringing Bells says it needsRs. 500 billionto make it work. For international readers, that’s around$7.4 billion.
So yeah, unless Ringing Bells gets this small help, it may not ship anything.
When pressed by Indian media on how they plan to actually make the business work, Ringing Bells representatives made vague comments about economies of scale, ad-generated revenue, and of course,the cloud(a service calledWhiteCloudwould supposedly see Freedom 251 users download hundreds of apps for Rs. 1 to Rs. 3 each).
Our guess is the real business plan is to gather a ton of email addresses (check!), make a big fuss about an impossibly cheap phone (check!), and use the publicity to kick start sales of other devices (in progress!).
Indeed, Ringing Bellsannounced todayan HD TV, a line of power banks, feature phones, and two new smartphones calledEleganceandElegant(yes, really). Don’t expect the same low price tag as the Freedom 251’s though. The Elegant costs Rs. 3,999 ($59) and the Elegance costs Rs. 4,499 ($66).
Just to understand what we’re dealing with here, Ringing Bells flat-out stole the lockscreen design of the LG G5 and put it on the press images of the Elegance and Elegant.
Then again, this shouldn’t be surprising coming from a company thatused correction fluid to hide the branding from their supposed “prototypes.”
At this point, the only thing we can recommend is to avoid Ringing Bells and anything associated with it as much as you can. If you need a cheap phone, there are many devices from real companies that won’t try to scam you.
Thank you for being part of our community. Read ourComment Policybefore posting.
