Who would buy a KFC-branded smartphone?

Alan Martin July 12, 2017

If you visit Alphr’s best Android smartphones page, you’ll find a selection of handsets from the likes of Samsung, HTC, LG, OnePlus and Huawei. What you won’t find on the list is anything from fast-food outlet KFC. This may seem like a fairly obvious point, given we rate handsets based on criteria such as performance and screen quality, rather than salt content and crispiness, but apparently the line is about to get blurred as KFC has announced it will be releasing its first (and very likely last) smartphone.

Given KFC knows considerably more about selling chicken than smartphone manufacturing, it has partnered with Huawei for this strictly limited-edition handset, which will be exclusive to China. The reason for this peculiar partnership? It’s a collaboration to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the first KFC store opening in the country, when it became the first Western fast-food outlet to do business in the Republic.

That doesn’t quite explain why they’re making a smartphone, rather than something chicken-related, but it’s as good an answer as you’re going to get I’m afraid. File it alongside KFC India’s phone-charging chicken box, I guess.

What makes this a KFC phone, rather than a Huawei model? Probably not too much overall – I mean, it’s bright red to match the KFC logo, and Colonel Sanders stares out from the back of the handset with a look that seems to suggest he’s regretting his choice of company successors, but other than that it’s fairly typical-looking. On the handset itself, you’ll find a couple of KFC-related bloatware apps – one which lets you order fried chicken, and another that lets you control the music in a branch of KFC. Pretty safe choices for someone whose love of fried chicken is enough for them to voluntarily buy the handset, really.

In terms of specifications, we have limited info. We only know that it will have 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage and a microSD slot for extra space, should you fill the internal storage with Instagram pictures of fried chicken. The press shots seem to reveal a fingerprint reader directly above the Colonel’s head too.

There’s currently no release date or price attached to the handset. And no plans yet for Huawei to take a shift at the deep fat fryer.