In the world of Android, there are many who wish to be the winner of what in effect is a race to the bottom, a race that asks how much a company can leave out of its products in the name of price. U.S.-based company InFocus is one of those companies, though its product, the Bingo 10, has managed to retain more features than usual for a budget smartphone.
The best way to describe the Bingo 10 is functional. The front of the handset packs a 4.5-inch, 854 x 480p resolution display, with a 5-megapixel camera sitting right above it. Around back, you’ll also fine a 5MP camera, with an LED flash module sitting next to both cameras. That’s something that can’t be said for many flagship smartphones, let alone any budget handset, so that’s quite a win for the Bingo 10.
Taking a peek under the hood reveals a 1.3GHz quad-core MediaTek MT6580M processor paired with 1GB of RAM. 8GB of native storage is all you’ll get, though the Micro SD card slot lets you expand that by up to 32GB. Keeping the lights on is a 2,000mAh battery, which seems rather paltry by today’s standards. Once you consider how undemanding the rest of the hardware is, however, you can expect healthy battery life out of the Bingo 10.
The Bingo 10’s two biggest calling cards are its $65 price tag and Android 6.0 Marshmallow. According to Sachin Thapar, head of InFocus’ Indian arm, the Bingo 10 is the cheapest smartphone in the world that runs Google’s latest mobile operating system. The company made a conscious decision to not only bolster the low number of smartphones that run Google’s latest and greatest, but also to show that high-end devices aren’t the only ones that can run Marshmallow.
Because the Bingo 10 is so cheap, its biggest competitor is likely the Freedom 251, which undercuts the former by around $60. However, many have questioned the legitimacy of Ringing Bells, the company behind the ultra-cheap handset, with various government authorities currently investigating the firm. Meanwhile, the Bingo 10 is a very real handset that will only be sold in India starting today, in either white with a green band around the edges or black with a bright blue accent.
