Redmi is keeping most of the details to itself but has now announced a new partnership with Marvel in promotion of the upcoming fourth installment of the Avenger’s series, Endgame. The announcement was made via the Chinese social networking site Weibo before being picked up by local media and does offer a fairly massive hint.
In addition to a shared image of the film’s official poster, the company indicates that the superhero group’s number has been “ringing” and more directly states that it is Marvel’s exclusive ‘mobile partner’ for the movie. The implication seems to be that Redmi — recently split from parent company Xiaomi — will be releasing a special edition smartphone in support of the movie.
An Avengers-themed device for Redmi fans
A Redmi smartphone themed or redesigned around the long-standing superheroes wouldn’t necessarily be too far of a stretch since similar Marvel partnerships have been worked out in the past. For the third installment of the series, pulling together the latter company’s top characters from their standalone entries for a combined showdown with their most dangerous foe yet, OnePlus was pinned as Marvel’s partner.
OnePlus subsequently revealed and then released a variant of the OnePlus 6 with a ‘custom 3D aramid fiber-textured glass body, with Gorilla Glass 5 coating’ that featured a golden Avenger’s emblem. The flagship also shipped with one of six randomly-chosen hero medals, an Iron Man mask protective case and a custom Avenger’s box. The alert slider, used for switching notification profiles, was gold-colored to match the rear emblem as well.
In terms of specs, that flagship packed the same specs as the top OnePlus 6 model, with 8GB RAM and 256GB storage backing up a then-top-tier Snapdragon 845 SoC. Everything else about the handset, including the front panel, went unchanged. The cost was set at $875 in China and the gadget was also made available in India.
A similar expectation may be reasonable for the Redmi Avengers device if that’s what the two companies have planned, but it may be reasonable to expect Marvel to go even more over the top this time around. If that’s the case, the latest dynamic duo may be centered around the expected follow-up to Redmi’s Note 7, the Redmi Note 7 Pro.
Conversely, this could all center around the flagship-level Snapdragon 855-powered Redmi device hinted at by the company back in February. If that’s the case, it will be built around on modern standards such an expected 6GB of memory, Android 9 Pie with Xiaomi’s MIUI 10, and in a combined glass and metal frame and shell. Whatever the case may be, Redmi will undoubtedly go the extra distance to set itself as a brand apart through the new partnership.
A timeframe?
There’s been no official indication of the time frame for the results of the partnership between Redmi and Marvel to be unveiled but that too might be taken from the previous partnerships the company has formed. For Avengers: Infinity War, the film was launched to theaters on April 27 of last year while the smartphone celebrating the gadget landed in China just short of a month later.
If Redmi follows a similar pattern, more information will likely become available over the next month or so. Avengers: Endgame hits theaters on April 26 and a promotional Redmi gadget would likely land soon after.