You’ve got one more day to book the newly announced Docoss X1 which is currently the cheapest Android smartphone in India, thanks to its price of Rs 888. But maybe you shouldn’t order it at all. The company behind the device is a DOCOSS Multimedia Private Limited that’s based in Jaipur and its domain name was registered just two months ago by an unknown party. Additionally, when you try to access the website, you’ll be lucky if the whole page loads even after multiple attempts.
The customer care numbers displayed on the landing page were not connecting at the time of writing this post. In case all of these details don’t make you hear ‘ringing bells’ in your head (pun intended), remember the Freedom 251? The Indian government smelled something fishy and went after the guys behind the ‘Rs 251’ Android phone even before Ringing Bells was accused of repacking Rs 3600 Adcom handsets as its Freedom 251. Following this, the company said it would only charge for the product when customers received delivery of it.
We’ll know for sure if Ringing Bells was a scam or not by June when the ‘brand’ will start shipping out the smartphone to buyers. As for the sparse information provided on the Docoss site, the X1 can be pre-ordered until 10pm on April 29, 2016. The handset will start being delivered to customers on May 2. Again, cash on delivery will be the mode of payment here. The thing is, the company might be able buy old products at throwaway rates and re-brand them as its own. But that still renders its claims of selling a new phone to users fraudulent.
Also see: Kerala’s mPhone owners arrested at launch event
And what if Docoss has somehow managed to find a manufacturer to produce its X1 at less than Rs 888? It can hardly guarantee anything but sub-standard hardware which will quickly reach the mountain of e-waste India is already struggling to deal with. The Docoss X1 is shown to have 3G connectivity, a 4-inch display, 1GB RAM, Android KitKat, a 1.2GHz dual core Cortex A7 processor, 4GB memory, a 0.3MP webcam, a 2MP rear camera and a 1300mAh battery. You can book it by sending your name and address via text to 7666204430. But do you really want to?
First seen on Phone Radar