When it comes to odd brand-licensed product mashups, typically you can count on Japan for a laugh here and there, but today, it’s China bringing the chuckles. With a Pepsi-branded smartphone. No, I don’t know why. But why not?
The Pepsi P1 is, by all accounts, an extremely forgettable cookie-cutter Chinese Android phone you’d find on Alibaba for about $150. It has a large 5.5″ 1080p display, a MediaTek processor, 16GB of storage, 2GB of RAM, and 13MP/5MP cameras. All, of course, atop a Pepsi-branded Android 5.1 skin. Also, it has a Pepsi logo. Because of course it does. It also looks like it has a fingerprint scanner, and every ounce of me hopes the lockscreen asks you to “take the Pepsi Challenge” when you wake it. Bonus points for a soda cap sound effect every time you successfully unlock it.
Pepsi has confirmed to Reuters that the leak on Mobipicker above is legit, saying the brand is being licensed to a third party for manufacturing. The 1299CNY (appx. $200US) phone will go on sale in China later this year along with a slew of Pepsi-branded accessories and apparel as part of a major international brand push for Pepsi. Pepsi isn’t actually making the phone, of course – while not identified explicitly, the device is almost certainly based on an existing Chinese market reference design in production by various one or various manufacturers in the country. It’s simply been rebranded with a Pepsi logo and a Pepsi-themed ROM as far as we know.
All things considered, the P1 is basically just a marketing stunt, then. While the phone obviously go into production, there’s almost certainly nothing about it that will prove legitimately interesting, aside from the novelty of being able to say “I bought a Pepsi phone” (maybe it comes with a free Pepsi?), which in and of itself should be cause for slight embarrassment.
- Source:
- Reuters,
- Mobipicker