The world’s 'cheapest smartphone' to ship starting this week

An Indian tech company says it is ready to ship out a smartphone that costs about the same price as a large coffee at Starbucks before the end of this week.

Ringing Bells says its Freedom 521 phone will be sent to its customers who preordered it in February for US$3.70.

Its bargain-basement price tag will see the company lose $2.2 per smartphone, according to the Guardian.

“We will have a loss, but I am happy that the dream of connecting rural and poor Indians, as part of the Digital India and Make in India initiatives, have been fulfilled with Freedom 251,” the founder and CEO of Ringing Bells, Mohit Goel, told the Indian Express.

The company says the 3G Android 5.1 smartphone comes equipped with a four-inch screen, eight-megapixel rear camera, a 3.2. megapixel front-facing camera, a 1.3 GHz processor, 1GB of Ram and 8GB of storage.

Ringing Bells says nearly 200,000 Freedom 251s are ready to be delivered starting on June 30, and hopes to ship 200,000 handsets a month going forward.

The company had originally planned to deliver 2.5 million phones before the end of June, however it received 70 million registrations within three days and its payment gateway crashed, according to the Indian Express.

“We learned from our mistakes and decided to go silent till we come out with the product. Now we have a four-inch, dual-SIM phone ready for delivery,” said Goel.

“I feel vindicated.”

Too good to be true?

The dirt-cheap phone has been met with skepticism in India and the tech community.

A “prototype” of the Freedom 251 unveiled at its launch, was revealed to be a phone manufactured by another Indian tech company, Adcom, with its logo covered up.

Adcom said in March that it planned to take legal action against Ringing Bells.

Ringing Bells was also accused of cheating by a politician who said it was not possible to build and sell the Freedom 251 for so little and that the company is deceiving consumers.

There’s also no trace of the Freedom 251 on the company’s website and a direct link to the device’s website redirects you to the main site.

Whether or not the “world’s cheapest smartphone” truly exists, or if 200,000 consumers are about to receive another phone in disguise, the mystery should be revealed – we hope – on Thursday.