New Delhi: A crazy rush to book online world's cheapest "Make in India" smartphone caused the firm's website to crash within hours of opening up for pre-order at 6 AM on Thursday.

The Noida-based startup received approximately six lakh hits per second to buy the Rs.251 (less than $4) device, the company said in a statement.

"Dear friends, we are very grateful for your enormous response and your kind patronage and would submit that as of now we receive approx 6 lakh hits per second, as a result of which due to your kind overwhelming response servers are overloaded," Ringing Bells Pvt Ltd sent as a message on www.freedom251.com.

"We humbly submit that we are, therefore, taking a pause and upgrading the service and will revert within or before 24 hours," the message read.

Taking the world by surprise, the firm on Wednesday launched "Freedom 251" smartphone that, it said, has been developed "with immense support" from the government.

However, there are some apprehensions about its final appearance and performance as it looks similar to an Apple iPhone and all the icons of the built-in app are a pixel-to-pixel copy of Apple's iOS icons.

"Freedom 251" has an Android 5.1 operating system, a 4-inch qHD IPS display, a 3.2-megapixel primary and a 0.3-megapixel front camera.

The device has 3G connectivity and has a 1.3GHz quad-core processor, 1GB RAM and 8GB internal memory and supports external memory cards of up to 32GB.

To power "Freedom 251", the company has put a 1,450mAh battery and claims to have a service network of 650 centres across India.

The smartphone has pre-installed apps like Swachh Bharat, Women Safety, WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter, among others.

The smartphone was supposed to be available for pre-order on the company website from 6 AM on February 18 until 8 PM on February 21. The deliveries for this India's most affordable smartphone will be completed by June 30, the company said in a statement.

A shipping charge of Rs.40 is being charged by the company and claims that the smartphone will be delivered on June 30 from the date of booking.

Bharatiya Janata Party leader Murli Manohar Joshi unveiled the India's most affordable smartphone at Nehru Park.(IANS)(Photo: techpp.com)