Six lakh hits per second lead to 'Freedom 251' website crash

A mad rush to book world's cheapest "Make in India" smartphone caused the firm's website to crash within hours of opening up for pre-order at 6 a.m. on Thursday.

The Noida-based startup received nearly six lakh hits per second to buy the Rs.251 (less than $4) device, the company said in a statement.

"Dear friends, we are very grateful for your enormous response and your kind patronage and would submit that as of now we receive approx 6 lakh hits per second, as a result of which due to your kind overwhelming response servers are overloaded," Ringing Bells Pvt Ltd. flashed a message on www.freedom251.com.

"We humbly submit that we are, therefore, taking a pause and upgrading the service and will revert within or before 24 hours," the message read.

Taking the world by surprise, the firm on Wednesday launched "Freedom 251" smartphone that, it said, has been developed "with immense support" from the government.

There are, however, some apprehensions about its final appearance and performance. It looks similar to an Apple iPhone. All the icons of the built-in app are a pixel-to-pixel copy of Apple's iOS icons.

"Freedom 251" has a Android 5.1 operating system, a 4-inch qHD IPS display, a 3.2-megapixel primary and a 0.3-megapixel front camera.

The device has 3G connectivity and has a 1.3GHz quad-core processor, 1GB RAM and 8GB internal memory and supports external memory cards of up to 32GB.

To power "Freedom 251", the company has put a 1,450mAh battery and claims to have a service network of 650 centres across India.

The smartphone comes with pre-installed apps like Swachh Bharat, Women Safety, WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter, among others.

The smartphone is available for pre-order on the company website from 6 a.m. on February 18 till 8 p.m. on February 21. The deliveries for India's most affordable smartphone will be completed by June 30, the company said in a statement.

The company is also charging a shipping charge of Rs.40 and claims that the smartphone will be delivered by June 30 from the date of booking.

The smartphone was unveiled at Nehru Park here by veteran Bharatiya Janata Party leader Murli Manohar Joshi.