Airtel Launches Karbonn A1 Indian, A41 Power to Take on Jio Phone

The entry-level 4G handset market in India has been feeling the competition ever since Reliance revealed its Jio Phone. Unsurprisingly, Airtel and Vodafone have followed up with their own Jio Phone rivals. After launching Karbonn A40 Indian, Airtel has launched new devices under its 'Mera Pehla Smartphone' initiative, in partnership with domestic handset maker Karbonn. The new Mera Pehla Smartphone devices are Karbonn A1 Indian and Karbonn A41 Power. To recall, Vodafone tied up with Micromax to launchBharat-2 Ultra, and BSNL also jumped into the fray with its Micromax Bharat-1 4G feature phone. Airtel had also unveiled the Smart 4G Android phone last month.
Announcing the new phones, Raj Pudipeddi, Director, Consumer Business and CMO, Bharti Airtel said, "We are delighted to deepen our partnership with Karbonn to fulfill the smartphone aspirations of India. We saw very strong demand for our first offer under the 'Mera Pehla Smartphone' initiative, which validates the broad appeal of this innovative proposition. We are also delighted to have Amazon on board as a partner in this exciting journey and look forward to working closely with them."

Pardeep Jain, MD, Karbonn Mobiles said, "We are delighted to partner with Airtel. The immense response that we got for us our offer with Airtel helped us add 70 percent new feature phone users to our existing portfolio."

Karbonn A1 Indian and A41 Power price

The Karbonn A1 Indian and A41 Power will be available at an effective price of Rs. 1,799 and Rs. 1,849 respectively. Karbonn says that the Karbonn A1 Indian and A41 Power come with a MRP of Rs. 4,390 and Rs. 4,290 respectively.

Interested consumers will have to make a down payment of Rs. 3,299 for the Karbonn A1 Indian and a down payment of Rs. 3,349 for the A41 Power. Airtel clarifies that customers will have to make 36 continuous monthly recharges minimum value of Rs. 169. This will make customers eligible to get a cash refund of Rs. 500 after 18 months and another Rs. 1,000 after 36 months, taking the total cash benefit to Rs 1500.

Airtel has also offered a choice to customers if they do not wish to recharge with Rs. 169 bundled plan with the Karbonn A1 Indian and A41 Power phones. The company says customers can do recharges of any denomination and validity as per individual requirements. However, to claim the cash refund benefit, recharges worth Rs. 3,000 must be done within the first 18 months which will make them eligible to claim the first refund instalment of Rs. 500, and another Rs. 3,000 over the next 18 months to claim the second refund instalment of Rs. 1,000).

Taking a dig at Reliance, Airtel notes, "The ownership of the smartphone is completely with the customer and there is no need to return the device to Airtel/Karbonn at any point to claim the cash benefit."

Airtel has confirmed that the new Karbonn 4G phones will be available via Amazon India starting next week. The company adds that the Karbonn A40 Indian launched earlier is now available on Amazon India.

Karbonn A1 Indian and A41 Power specifications

Both the new Karbonn smartphones come with identical specifications such as 4-inch WVGA display, run on Android 7.0 Nougat, pack 1GB of RAM, 8GB inbuilt storage, dual-SIM support, and 4G with VoLTE support. Talking about the differences, the Karbonn A1 Indian is powered by a 1.1GHz quad-core processor and packs a 1500mAh battery while the Karbonn A41 Power is powered by 1.3GHz quad-core processor and packs 2300mAh battery. The Karbonn A1 Indian sports 3.2-megapixel rear camera and 2-megapixel front camera. The Karbonn A41 Power sports a 2-megapixel rear and a 0.3-megapixel front camera.