Pepsi Fizzes Up For P1 Smartphone Launch

Pepsi has become the latest, slightly more left field, entrant in an increasingly crowded smartphone market and will launch the Pepsi Phone P1 in China if a crowdfunding target is met.

The soft drinks giant has been rumoured to be developing a handset for several months and anyone desperate to get their hands on the cola-themed device will be pleasantly surprised at the cost, as the P1 will initially only be available for around £70 (700 yuan) on JD Finance, China’s version of Kickstarter.

Refreshing

The phone itself, launched with the tagline “one is all”, may in fact prove to be a fairly handy budget Android device, with the product page saying that will come with a 5.5 inch screen featuring a 1920x1080p FullHD display, meaning it will be ideal for watching films or playing games.

Inside, there’s an octa-core MediaTek MT6792 processor, 2GB of RAM, and a 13MP camera, meaning it stacks up fairly well against the likes of the Moto E and Sony and Samsung’s lower-end devices. There’s also 4G connectivity and a fingerprint scanner for added security.

The fund-raising for the Pepsi Phone P1 started on November 18, and the project hopes to raise three million yuan to begin production. The JD Finance page says that it has already raised 580,625 Chinese yuan (more than £59,000) after just one day, meaning that as there are 14 days left to go in the funding process, there is a decent chance the P1 will meet its target and go into production.

Android smartphones are unsurprisingly a popular attraction for device manufacturers around the world, holding a huge proportion of the device market.

Recent figures from Gartner estimate that Android has 84.7 percent of the global smartphone market, ahead of iOS on 13.1 percent and Windows on 1.7 percent. global sales of smartphones to end users totalled 353 million units, a 15.5 percent growth over the same period in 2014.

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Pepsi Phone P1

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