The Android smartphone will mark a rather radical new product launch from a company more acquainted with bottled drinks. Mashable reports that the unusual news comes courtesy of Mobipicker, a mobile phone news blog who has been following the developments of PepsiCo China for some time.
The site writes that Pepsi is planning a Beijing launch event on Oct. 20, only one week away. The company is looking to make a gentle entrance to the market with its first device, unveiling a reasonably-priced but relatively-large handset.
For the equivalent of around $205, buyers will be getting a 5.5-inch Full HD display, 2GB of RAM and a 1.7GHz processor. It’s certainly capable with specifications typical of flagship devices only a couple of years ago. Pepsi has also included a decent battery at 3,000mAh, an above-average size for phones of this class.
The main camera will have a 13-megapixel resolution and will be joined by a five-megapixel selfie-shooter on the front. Owners may find themselves quickly having to delete photos though, as there is only 16GB of internal storage.
Leaked images of the device show a shiny silver body that looks like it has drawn inspiration from the iPhone 6 and recent HTC designs. The phone has capacitive keys instead of onscreen ones and appears to have a fingerprint sensor on the back cover. The colourful Pepsi logo is very visible on the chassis and it remains to be seen how consumers will feel when holding a phone made by a brand known for a very different kind of product.
The P1 will launch with Android 5.1 Lollipop and there’s no way of telling whether Pepsi will ever get round to updating it to Marshmallow. Presumably, we’ll get to find out next week when the phone gets an official unveiling.
The P1’s existence does not mean that Pepsi has suddenly opened manufacturing plants and begun churning out Android devices. The more likely explanation is it has licensed its branding to an existing Chinese manufacturer, giving the company much publicity and income with only comparatively minor outlay in the form of manufacturing costs paid to whoever is actually building the phone.
GizChina notes that Pepsi has already been in one such partnership before, working with Oppo to include a Pepsi-branded interface on an existing Oppo device rebranded as the “Pepsi Phone.” This time, the company does seem to have designed the handset itself though, the manufacturer of which is yet to be identified.
Pepsi’s reasons for its launch into the smartphone market are currently uncertain, as is how popular its phones will be. Plans for availability outside of China are unknown but, if rumours play out, it’s possible one of the world’s largest soft drinks firms is also going all-in on technology.
