Pablo Escobar's brother launches $349 Fold 1 smartphone

Roberto Escobar, Pablo Escobar's older brother and the co-founder of Escobar Inc., recently announced the Pablo Escobar Fold 1. The foldable phone is priced at $349 and available for pre-order on Escobar Inc's website. Featuring a Snapdragon 855 and up to 8 GB of RAM, this'd be an interesting device even if wasn't foldable. 

It is a foldable, however, and it bears an uncanny resemblance to the Royole FlexPai, a $1000 foldable that beat the Galaxy Fold to market. From the promotional material Escobar Inc has shared so far, it looks like the Fold 1 might actually be a FlexPai rebrand. The two phones look identical, have the same internals, and fold outwards, not in. This is a red flag because the Fold 1 sells for one third the price of the FlexPai. 

Escobar Inc's advertising is certainly flavorful. A 30-second TV ad for the Fold 1 claims that "Apple boy Steve once looked into space. He saw Pablo Escobar with a phone beyond anybody's imagination." Other advertisements feature Russian lingerie models posing with the phone. 

Because the Fold 1 is at the pre-order stage, units have yet to ship. At this point, we're still not sure whether this is a real device or an attention-seeking stunt like the Turing Hubblephone announcement. On the off chance that it's real, the Escobar Fold 1 is both the cheapest foldable and the cheapest Snapdragon 855 device you can get your hands on.