Leonardo DiCaprio must be pleased these days, having received a check for $5 million from Chinese mobile maker OPPO for advertising its upcoming Android-based smartphone, the X903. The company officially unveiled the handset’s specs yesterday, although the phone still smells very much of vaporware — even with the DiCaprio ads.
The phone, whenever it drops, will reportedly be running Android 2.2, with a 1GHz processor, 512MB of RAM, an 8 megapixel camera that supports 720p shooting at 30fps, and W-CDMA/GSM 3G. Currently the video ad (below) is nearly inescapable in China. Take a bus ride to work, and you are bound to see the ad several times on the in-bus flatscreens.
Although OPPO unveiled the X903 back in May there’s still no launch date set – leaving potential customers just looking at DiCaprio until the phone appears in stores.
OPPO is a manufacturer of digital devices (including MP3 and BluRay players) established back in 2004. It has made a few cellphones featuring music playback which were received well enough to make them try out a smartphone.
$5 million shows how seriously they take this product, but it also puts the phone (or rather the ‘concept phone,’ for now) into the center of debate: Should Oppo pay such a large amount for advertising? Can the phone compete with the other big smartphones on the market today? It’s hard to guess whether DiCaprio’s star power can drive Oppo to actual success.
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