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Pepsi to Launch a Smartphone in China

There’s a story going around this week that the soft drink maker Pepsi is going to release a smartphone in China.

UberGizmo, LatinPost, PhoneArena and other sites have reported on a set of leaked specs for the Pepsi P1 smartphone. This phone is supposed to feature a 5.5″and run Android 5.1 on a 1.7GHz MediaTek MT6592 CPU with Mali-450 MP4 GPU, 2GB RAM, and 16GB internal storage. A 13MP camera can be found on back, with a 5MP camera on front, and inside you’ll find a 3Ah battery.

pepsi p1

The phone is set to launch on 20 October, and cost around $205.

If and when it does launch you’ll be able to find more details on the Pepsi China website, but I’m not convinced it even exists, or that it belongs to Pepsi.

Update: Pepsi has confirmed the news, telling Reuters that "it is working with a licensing partner to market a line of mobile phones and accessories in China in the next few months." The other half of the Reuters piece said "PepsiCo has no plans to get into the mobile phone manufacturing business, a spokesperson said on Monday."

So you can disregard the rest of this post.

While it is possible that Pepsi has partnered with a smartphone OEM to sell a Pepsi-branded mobile device in China, it’s just as likely that these specs are a hoax or that someone is using the Pepsi brand without permission.

This type of hoax would be easy for anyone with decent Photoshop skills and a basic understanding of the smartphone market. And it would be almost as easy for a shady smartphone maker to slap Pepsi’s logo on a device.

Remember, China is the kind of place where you can find Apple sneakers:

apple skeakers

So yes, I have serious doubts about this story, and the lack of a verifiable official announcement does not help.

Do you think it’s true?

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Comments


jjj October 12, 2015 um 2:18 pm

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/12/us-pepsico-phone-idUSKCN0S61WE20151012

Nate Hoffelder October 12, 2015 um 2:27 pm

Okay, so Pepsi confirmed it. That is what I was waiting for.

Thanks!


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