Ever since Reliance announced the JioPhone, all the telecom providers are going gaga over device partnerships and making them available at dirt-cheap effective prices. The latest one to enter the crowd is Vodafone that has partnered with Micromax to launch the Bharat 2 Ultra with a special plan for its customers. The effective price of the phone has been brought down to Rs. 999.
The Micromax Bharat 2 Ultra obviously costs much more than this but Vodafone will subsidise the amount if you commit for 3 years of continuous usage. This marketing strategy was introduced to the market by Reliance Jio and the other players didn’t take long to follow suit. Airtel and BSNL have also announced similar partnerships quite recently.
Micromax has priced the phone at Rs. 2,899 and will be available for anyone to purchase regardless of the network they are on. The Vodafone customers will have an added benefit of getting a total cashback of Rs. 1,900 in two instalments over three years. This condition will only stand valid if the customers recharge their Vodafone number with at least Rs. 150 every month for the next 36 months.
An instalment of Rs. 900 will be paid to the customer after 18 months of continuous usage and Rs. 1,000 will be paid after the completion of another 18 months. This cashback will be credited to the customer’s M-Pesa wallet that can be used for digital transactions or can be withdrawn as hard cash.
This isn’t the first smartphone that Micromax has launched in partnership with a telecom provider. Last week, BSNL and Micromax launched the 4G-enabled feature phone with BSNL offering a special plan of Rs. 97 for the phone. Airtel has also partnered Karbonn to provide a similar deal but the effective price of the smartphone, in that case, was Rs. 1,399.
Micromax Bharat 2 Ultra sports a 4-inch WVGA display and has a 2MP camera on the back along with a VGA one on the front. It will come powered by a quad-core Spreadtrum processor and 512MB of RAM. The internal storage will be 4GB and the phone will come running Android Marshmallow. The battery capacity of the Bharat 2 Ultra would be 1300mAh.
