Pablo Escobar’s Holding Company Promises a Folding Phone for $350

A top-spec folding phone for $350, however, seems a bit too good to be true.

The Escobar Fold 1.

(Photo: Escobar Inc)

At a time when manufacturers like Samsung, Huawei, Motorola and others are coming up with their folding phones – with a foldable display – the latest entrant in the foldable phones is, a rather unusual one.

Famous drug kingpin Pablo Escobar's brother, Roberto De Jesus Escobar Gaviria has decided to take on smartphone makers, with his latest offering – the Escobar Fold 1. That is not the only astonishing fact about this device. At a claimed $350 price tag, the Escobar Fold is significantly cheaper than other offerings in the segment.

The cheapest of the lot, the Moto Razr starts at a price of $1,500, while the Samsung Galaxy Fold costs $1,980 and the Huawei Mate X will cost around $2,400 upon launch.

The phone runs on Android 9 and has a 7.8-inch AMOLED FHD Plus screen when folded. The Escobar fold runs on a Snapdragon 8 series chipset and has dual 16-megapixel and a 20-megapixel camera.

The phone packs a 4,000 mAh battery and comes in two RAM options - a 6GB RAM option and an 8GB variant.

The phone is being made by Escobar Inc, Pablo Escobar's holding company. The website shows two variants - a 128GB and a 512GB variant, that costs $500.

Escobar Fold promo videos are filled with promo videos and photos, mostly with a focus on bikini-clad models, to show off the phone. One of the videos even gives an odd reference to late Apple founder Steve Jobs.

However, a top-spec folding display for $350 seems a bit too good to be true, like the Freedom 251 smartphone, which was promised by the Noida-based Ringing Bells Pvt Ltd but never made it to the final customers.