The Truth and Deception Behind Samsung’s iPhone X Bashing Ad

Samsung has a rich and colorful history of flaunting its Galaxy smartphones so that they appear more powerful, advanced and packed with features relative to Apple’s latest-and-greatest iPhone model. And so perhaps it’s not surprising that within just days of releasing its latest, most advanced and feature-packed iPhone model ever, Samsung was back with an all-new ad spot bashing Apple’s high-end iPhone X, specifically.

Dubbed ‘Grow up with an Upgrade to Galaxy’, the ad is arguably among Samsung’s more debatable pieces of Pro-Galaxy propaganda, however, in which it not only propositions its Galaxy Note 8 phablet as a superior smartphone, but does so in a way that honestly raises questions about how deceptive these videos really are..

The ad itself is more of an exposé, actually, which chronologically highlights a number of iPhone launches over the years while subtly mocking the major features and changes Apple failed to incorporate along the way.

It starts out in 2007, where we see Apple’s newly-unveiled iPhone mocked for its minimal storage space — and again in 2011, when Samsung released its large Galaxy Note phablet, yet still felt it was somehow relevant to mock the much smaller iPhone 5s and its inherently intentional lack of a stylus.

Meanwhile, with models as new as the 6s and 6s Plus, Apple has proven that Samsung may have lost its competitive edge in making the iPhone seem less advanced. In 2016, the Galaxy-maker highlighted how Apple’s iPhone 7 and 7 Plus were not as resistant to water as its own Galaxy S7 flagships — even despite having the same IP67 water- and dust-proof certification rating.

In the end, Samsung’s paid actor unsurprisingly ends up swapping out his iPhone for a Galaxy Note 8 — and while we’ve highlighted the Note 8’s many strengths and shortcomings before, there are nevertheless some interesting misconceptions worth pointing out.

For starters, while it’s indeed fact that Samsung brought advanced hardware features like wireless charging, water-resistance and AMOLED displays to its smartphones years before Apple, the iPhone-maker has historically sought to differentiate its devices in other significant ways — by using proprietary technologies such as its blazingly-fast A-series processors, iOS’ overall speed, stability, compatibility and ease of use, and Apple’s strict stance on matters related to security and privacy.

Moreover, with regards to the iPhone X, specifically: it’s not only worth pointing out that Apple incorporated a number of next-generation technologies that Samsung is actively scrambling to replicate; but the handset also boasts a super-advanced, MacBook-caliber A11 Bionic CPU, an edge-to-edge Super Retina OLED display which is interestingly built by Samsung, as well as a wide range of integral components that are likewise manufactured by Samsung and its subsidiaries.

So while Samsung’s grand attempt at whittling iPhone X down into little more than a Galaxy Note 8 wannabe is certainly consistent with its typical sentiments, you know the company is running low on talking points when it’s still bashing the headphone jack. And the notch? Well, apparently it’s not even as bad as we’d been lead to believe, which only makes this ad all-the-more overblown.