Indian telecom operator Airtel on Monday announced that it is introducing the second smartphone as a part of the “Mera Pehla Smartphone” initiative. With this initiative, Airtel collaborates with the device manufacturers to offer smartphones at the price of a feature phone. The first company to partner Airtel for the initiative was Karbonn, now Celkon has tied up with Airtel to launch the new Celkon Smart 4G phone.

“We are pleased to partner with Celkon in our endeavour to bring affordable smartphone options to the market and build an ‘open ecosystem’ of low cost devices. Celkon has strong brand affinity and deep distribution in southern Indian markets, and our partnership will enable us to serve a large set of customers with this affordable smartphone proposition,” said Raj Pudipeddi, Director – Consumer Business & CMO, Bharti Airtel, in a statement.

Similar to the Karbonn A40 Indian, Celkon Smart 4G will be offered at INR 2,849, but the consumers will be able to claim cashbacks upto INR 1500 from Airtel if they fulfil the recharge requirements.

According to Airtel, to avail of this offer, the customer needs to make a down payment of INR 2849 for the 4G smartphone and make 36 continuous monthly recharges of Rs 169. The customer will get a cashback of INR 500 after 18 months and another INR 1000 after 36 months, taking the total cash benefit to INR 1500. If the consumers don’t want to use the bundled INR 169 recharge, they can opt for any other recharge, but they will have to do recharges worth INR 3000 within the first 18 months (to claim the first refund installment of Rs 500) and another INR 3000 over the next 18 months for INR 1000 cashback.

Celkon Smart 4G specifications

Coming to the phone, the Celkon Smart 4G runs on Android 6.0 Marshmallow, an outdated Android version. It features a 4-inch screen with 854x480p resolution and is powered by 1.3GHz quad-core processor. The phone also comes with 1GB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage, microSD card slot and dual-SIM support. There is a 3.2MP rear camera as well as a 2MP selfie camera on the phone.