This crowdfunded smartphone is no "diet-Pepsi" version of your average Android device

According to a new project posted on Chinese crowdfunding website JD Finance, a startup is finding a rather hefty following of supporters looking to turn a Pepsi-branded, or “Pepsi-inspired” Android smartphone, into reality, with the apparent blessing of Pepsico itself, allthough we weren’t able to find any reference to the affiliation of the global brand maker of anything from potato chips, to cereal, to sugary beverages.

The Pepsi smartphone is in no uncertain terms inspired by a blend of design elements ranging from Samsung Galaxy smartphones, to the iPhone 6S, featuring a 5.5 inch 1920 x 1080 pixels curved Full-HD touchscreen, which, according to the crowdfunding page, is also waterproof, or at least protected against accidental water spill.

The back of the device features a fingerprint reader, as well as an F2.0, 1300W, 5MP camera with what seems to be an optical zoom. The device is powered by a 1.7GHz eight-core processor, as well as up to 64GB of LPDDR3 memory. the most interesting feature is the odd design of the slide-out side tray housing both a Micro-SIM and a Nano-SIM card.

The battery that comes with this device is a 3000mAh Lithium-Ion. The Pepsi Phone will also feature Bluetooth 4.0, and IEEE 802.11 b/g/n WiFi.

The company working on this phone is planning on running the device on a 6.1 version of a modified version of Android 5.1, called Dido OS.

The release of this device, should the campaign be successful, will be effective December 3rd 2015. With 11 days away, the company has gathered less than half od the funding needed to kickstart the project, however, if the direct endorsement of Pepsico is real, it’s not entirely implausible that this phone could actually happen, and if it does, we’ll certainly drink to that.