The Selfie Drone That Never Was

Taking a photo with a drone can be pretty hard. I mean, trying to fly these can end up with them crashing to the concrete.

That's why the Torquing Group designed the Zano - a drone that tracks you doing random things.

Zano films you by following your smartphone. So it has a second purpose - if you lose your phone outside the house, just look up at the sky and look where the drone is hovering.

When you do activities outside like biking, rock-climbing or just chilling at the beach, the drone will use its GPS and pressure sensor to navigate its way to you and snap a pic or two.

Everyone loved it. Kickstarter ate it up and Zano got 2.3 million euros for it. And then issues started to appear.

They couldn't meet their stretch goals. The factory in China creating the parts was late. The drones that did ship crashed into walls or took awful photos. Then they disappeared and filed for bankrupcy. Forever.

Zano was gone.

Kickstarter is a really good idea. Many people love to fund projects, and much of the time the backers get their product.

Once I funded a Kickstarter project too. I shelled out around $25 for the project and guess what? It never came.

Kickstarter needs to force their projects to be more accountable. Many backers of the Zano never got their refund.

What do you think? Would you fund a Kickstarter project after hearing about this? What do you think about the Zano?

Comment in the comment section below!

Indian Smartphone Sells For $4 (Scam Revisited)

See the previous article here: A $4 Indian Smartphone Just Dropped...

Techies and people hoping to buy the Freedom 251 around the world are confused. At the opening event for Freedom 251, Ringing Bells paraded around their phone, which was part of the Made In India campaign.

Then, a few days later people started noticing that the logo on the top was whited out on every picture. People noticed that a lot of the time, the pictures on the official website appeared to have the iPod touch iOS UI photoshopped in.

After some people scratched off the whiteout on their phone, they found a logo that didn't look like Ringing Bells' - Adcom.

Adcom is a Chinese phone maker. They build cheap phones including the Ikon 4 ($50). Their phone has many of the same specs as the Freedom and has the same chassis as the Freedom 251.

Here, take a look for yourself:

When contacted, Adcom denied that they built the phone for Ringing Bells and that they had nothing to do with them.

Ringing Bells abruptly stopped selling their product recently, citing their high demand. High demand's normally great for a business! Why stop?

An Indian government official has called this "A Ponzi Scam". A Ponzi Scam is when a fake company is set up to draw investment to pay old investors that they ripped off.

The Indian government is investigating the case of the $4 Smartphone right now. Many people have filed fraud against Ringing Bells and will see court soon.

I'm kind of disappointed. At first, I was kind of suspicious (especially after seeing the whiteout covering the logo on many of the pictures) and of the dirt-cheap price, but hopeful that this would  bring down the price of tech and make it more accessible to people.

What do you think? Do you think a $4 Smartphone will ever be possible to make and when? Comment in the comment section below!