World's cheapest smartphone made in India
The world's cheapest smartphone, Namotel 'Acche Din', was marketed at Rs. 99 only at a press conference held in Bengaluru on Tuesday. Originally priced at Rs. 2,999, the smartphone is available for booking at it's special launch price from May 17 to May 25 Four other smartphones are launched by the same company, their prices ranging from Rs. 1,999 to Rs. 1,99,999
Namotel: A profile
Namotel is Bengaluru-based start-up that began running in 2016. The company was incorporated under the patronage of 'Make in India'. Namotel claims to have offices in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Delhi and Chennai. It's aim is to create a new business model with sustained profitabilty and high sales growth, empowering people with quality innovative products.
Previously launched low-cost smartphones
Docoss Multimedia Private Ltd, a Jaipur-based company launched it's new X-series smartphone, Docoss X1 in April 2016. Docoss X1 was priced at RS. 888. There was a buzz in February surrounding the launch of Freedom251, a smartphone priced at Rs. 251 launched by Ringing Bells, another start-up company in Noida. Another India-based brand, mPhone, made headlines about it's series of smartphones priced economically.
Specifications of the smartphone
'Acche Din' comes with a 4 inch display, 1 GB Ram and an internal storage of 4 GB expandedable upto 32 GB with a microSD card. The device runs on Android 5.1 Lollipop OS powered by a 1.3 GHz quadcore processor. It's battery comes with a 1325 mAh capacity. The phone comes with a 2MP rear campera and a 0.3 MP front camera.
How to pre-book the Namotel smartphone?
The smartphone can be booked on the website namotel.com To proceed with the booking of the phone, people need to sign up for a service called BeMyBanker at www.bemybanker.com Scanned copies of a passport sized picture not more than 1 MB and the Aadhar card less than 2 MB's are required. According to the website norms, Namotel provides a 1-year warranty on the phone.
Launch of 'Acche Din'
Madhav Reddy, the promoter of Namotel, said there is no payment option through Debit/Credit cards or Net/Online banking. It is available only a cash-on-delivery basis. The nominal delivery charge for the phone is Rs. 199, which is twice the cost of the phone.
