Updated: Following some more research, this phone is looking increasingly shady, and probably too good to be true.

Original story

An Android-based smartphone costing about the same as a cup of coffee has been launched today in India by the local company Ringing Bells. The Freedom 251 costs 251 rupees (about £2.50 or $4), comes with a one-year guarantee, and has surprisingly decent specifications, on paper at least. The phone's price is not subsidised by a carrier contract: it really costs £2.50.

It sports a 4-inch 960×560 display, a 1.3 GHz quadcore processor (manufacturer unknown), and a 1450mAh battery. It comes with 1GB RAM and 8GB of internal memory, with micro SD card support up to 32GB. There's a 3.2-megapixel rear camera and a 0.3MP front camera.

The Freedom 251 runs Android 5.1, and offers a range of pre-installed apps: global ones such as WhatsApp, Facebook, and YouTube, along with others designed for the Indian market. These include Women Safety, Swachh Bharat ("a mass movement for cleanliness"), and vertical apps aimed at those in the health, farming, and fishing sectors. Sales of the Freedom 251 start in India tomorrow, Thursday February 18, at 6am local time.

Ringing Bells was founded in 2015, and claims to be "one of the fastest growing smartphone companies in India." The Hindustan Times writes: "A new entrant in the Indian mobile phone market, Ringing Bells had launched one of India’s cheapest 4G smartphone at Rs 2,999 [about £30], recently. It has launched two other feature phones in the market."

The article says that sales of smartphones are increasing rapidly in India, and the country is expected to overtake the US as the second-largest market soon. That has led to a number of major smartphone manufacturers moving assembly plants to the country: the Hindustan Times mentions two three companies from China—Xiaomi, Motorola (owned by Lenovo) and Gionee.

The Indian government is promoting local manufacturing with its "Make in India" initiative, and Ringing Bells says that it aims to move from simply assembling handsets in India to carrying out all aspects of its development work there too.

India's experience with an earlier high-profile project promising very cheap computing for the masses was less than happy. The Indian government-backed Aakash tablet project was meant to cost $35 initially, and eventually drop down to $10, but the machine's performance was widely criticised. As Forbes India put it in 2012: "The disastrous Aakash project has expunged India's dream of developing the world's cheapest computing device."

Although the Freedom 251's low price is undoubtedly attractive, and its specifications promising, it remains to be seen whether the product is the breakthrough it purports to be—or just another Aakash.