India's $4 "make in India" Smartphone is actually made in China

Freedom 251 , a phone that broke the internet a few days back is still making headlines even today (there was already some controversy about the change of the phone's placeholder images). The phone , initially priced at a mindblowing $4 (INR 251) is basically aimed to at a audience who like to own a touchscreen smartphone , but has no way to afford it .The phone , launched at a special event was said to tally with the Indian prime ministers vision of "empowering India to the last person, transforming India's growth story" is now turning out to be a major red flag event as the "make in India" smartphone is turning out to be a Chinese iPhone clone from the manufacturer Adcom . The news , which initially popped up after some eagle eyed spotters saw that the units had "Adcom" painted over were published on the internet and it has so far caused a stir with much of India's technology community.

Freedom 251 was initially announced with this placeholder

Current website photo of the Freedom 251

The handsets alleged manufacturer "Ringing bells" did state that they used Adcom units at the event but their final product will be based on the Adcom unit's platform and everything else would be changed . This however does mean that the Freedom 251 would have to be designed differently and it would have a different Android ui which on the Adcom unit looks a bit like iOS.

Freedom 251's event retail packaging

This however does mean that the initial $4 price would not be met as designing , as well as manufacturing (as well as software coding) will drive up the cost, so in order to sell the phone for $4 , the Freedom 251 would probably have to give up its "freedom " and drop the "make in India" theme in order to get re-badged units from China .Overall the $4 phone is ambitious , but in the real world achieving that target is not possible unless the company has local R&D and manufacturing facilities to rival the cheaper alternatives from China .

Sources - GSMarena

Comments

iPad (2022) and iPad Pro with M2 announced

Apple has announced their latest iteration of the iPad (entry level model) and the iPad Pro lineup with the new M2 processor. The event, held on the 18th of October as a recorded session displayed the key features of the iPads with the most significant being the base model iPad which has now received an upgrade. iPad 2022 This model of the base model iPad ditches the almost 12 year old home button and display layout and goes for a cleaner display only design found on the iPad Air . The chassis, which now comes with flatter sides and a TouchID fingerprint sensor on the top has also abandoned the lightning port in favor of USB C and it also comes with a set of pogo style connectors for accessories including a keyboard with trackpad. Internally, the iPad comes either as a Wifi only (Wifi6) and a 5G cellular model and is offered with 64 or 256GB of storage. The processor has also been upgraded to the Apple A14 which is the same found on the iPhone 12 series and last year's iPad Air. L...

HTC One to sell as TD 101 at China Mobile

HTC decided to invest in such a brand by launching the One series of smartphones last year, although the company was not able to impose its own product names to certain carriers. Then, just a few days ago, the company launched the HTC One, which is going to be the company’s only One-branded handset this year, a make-or-break kind of project for the Taiwanese Android maker that’s still having a tough time fighting against the competition, especially Samsung. We were under the impression that HTC will further invest in its One brand and not budge to carrier demands anymore when it comes to changing the name of the product – in the U.S., AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile are going to sell it as the HTC One. But it looks like things aren’t necessarily so, and no, it’s not Verizon that’s going to get its way selling the One as the Droid DNA Plus, as it was recently rumored. We’re looking at China Mobile this time around, which has announced the HTC One as the HTC TD 101. That’s certa...

Google Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 pro along with Pixel watch unveiled.

Google announced their latest Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro smartphones along with the Pixel Watch - google's first wearable at a special launch event today. The devices, which are powered by Google's second generation Tensor SOC bring major improvements in photography which has always been Google's highlight. Google Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro. Google's Pixel 7 and the Pixel 7 Pro are Google's latest flagship phones for 2022. The devices, which have been developed around the Tensor G2 - Google's second generation processor developed on a 4nm architecture. The chipset, which consists of 2 Cortex X1 cores, 2 Cortex A78 cores and 4 Cortex A55 cores with a Mali G710 MC10 GPU cores and the chip is paired with 8GB of RAM for the Pixel 7 and 12GB RAM for the Pro variant. Both models come with 128 / 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage and the pro model comes with 512GB. The phones, which come with two different display sizes consist of a 6.3" 2400x1080 AMOLED display with 90Hz refre...

MasHD Blog

Search This Blog