bad product names

There Is Now a Smartphone Named ‘Yolo’

In an effort to connect with the youth of Africa/sap the last drops of remaining intrigue out of Drake’s ubiquitous catchphrase, Intel has decided to name its new African smartphone “Yolo.”

The phone, which is aimed at the Kenyan market and produced in a partnership with Safaricom, will have an Intel Atom Z2420 processor, a three-and-a-half-inch screen, and a five-megapixel camera, according to Mashable.

Yolo” means nothing in Swahili, according to Google Translate, and there is no Yolo River or Yolo Mountain anywhere in Kenya (I checked), so I’m going to assume charitably that Intel’s African marketing director grew up in Yolo County, California, and decided to name the phone after his or her beloved home region. The alternative —  that a major American chip manufacturer had a brainstorming session about what to call a phone for Africans that ended up with “Yolo” as the top choice —  is, frankly, terrifying.