Freedom 251 smartphone website crashes; gets 6 lakh hits per second on 1st day of booking

Zee Media Bureau

New Delhi: India's cheapest smartphone Freedom 251 website crashed on day 1 of its pre-booking, thus leaving tens of thousands of enthusiasts disappointed and disheartened.

Even before the server crashed, many people faced problem in booking the phone because of glitches in the payment window within an hour of opening of the bookings.

The company has said that it is halting the booking as of now and will soon resume services.

The website reads:

“Dear friends, we are very grateful for your enormous response and your kind patronage and would submit that as of now we received approx. 6 Lacs hits per second as a result of your kind overwhelming response, servers are over loaded.

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

Once again our respectful thanks and gratitude for your support and patience. We look forward your return as soon as we are back online well within 24 hours.”

Notably, the booking opened at 6 am today and will get closed on February 21 at 8 p.m. The company says deliveries will be completed by 30th June 2016.

Freedom 251, hailed as India's most affordable smartphone was launched at just Rs 251.

The 3G handset, Freedom 251, features a 4-inch display, Qualcomm 1.3-GHz quad-core processor and 1 GB RAM.

The Android Lollipop-based handset has an onboard storage of 8 GB with support for expandable memory of up to 32 GB. It features a 3.2-MP rear and a 0.3-MP front facing camera and a 1,450-mAh battery.