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Remember Freedom 251, for Rs 251, and then the Docoss X1 for Rs. 888 and now meet Namotel Acche Din for Rs 99, the world’s cheapest smartphone. Perhaps, another tall claim, another scam. Namotel, a Bengaluru-based smartphone company has announced, the Namotel Acche Din, for just Rs 99 and as we speak their website was down, thanks to the overnight publicity and the cheap prices.
/ciol/media/post_attachments/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Namotel-Registration-Form.jpg "Namotel Registration Form")
In order to get the phone at your doorstep, you are supposed to make Rs 199 extra payment. So, getting that handset delivered will cost you more than the smartphone itself. The basic features of this smartphone are a 4-inch HD (1280x720) display with a 2MP rear camera and 0.3MP front camera. It packs a quad-core processor with 16GB RAM and 4GB internal storage. It’s powered by a 1325 mAh battery, runs on Android 5.1 and has dual SIM support.
Namotel spokesperson Madhava Reddy told the press that pre-bookings for the smartphone are currently open on the company website until May 25 for Rs 99. According to the company website at present they have already shut taking orders because they would not want to fool people and the orders that they can currently fulfil are already full.
The Namotel Acche Din buying process is too tedious and flawed. In order to buy the phone, you are expected to first register on bemybanker.com, with Aadhar Card proof, and pay a one-time fee of Rs 199. After which you shall receive a user ID and password, which supposedly lets them purchase the phone. Of course, when we tried it, the bemybanker.com website was unresponsive and claimed that it received the highest traffic on 18th May and hence the website has crashed. It says, “we have created a new record by getting 10 million hits in less than 12 hrs on 18th may 2016.”
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Just like Freedom 251, the phone “Pictures shown on the website"... "for illustration purpose only” are of phone called Leagoo Z1, which costs approximately Rs 2,655when converted from dollars. Namotel website was earlier showing the price of the smartphone marked down to Rs 99 from Rs 2,999.
/ciol/media/post_attachments/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/461751-leagoo-z1.jpg "leagoo z")
Namotel was registered earlier this year under the Make in India initiative, and the Namotel website is registered to Madhava Reddy and of course the bemybanker.com is also registered under Reddy’s name, back in 2014. The entire game here smells fishy. We have to be wary of all these cheap smartphones or cheap trying to be smartphones!
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