As mistakes go, Samsung’s latest was huge, heralding the power of Apple’s iPhone at the expense of its own flagship Galaxy S24 Ultra. So, is this a reason for Galaxy owners to switch…
Has Samsung just given millions of its users a reason to switch to an iPhone
Samsung and Apple are going head-to-head for dominance in the world of premium smartphones. Last week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was dominated by Galaxy AI branding, as Samsung gains ground while Apple lags behind, with its own on-device generative AI not due until the fall.
But until now, one other feature that has characterized the battle between Samsung and Apple is the relative qualities of their top-end smartphone cameras. As much as anything else, it has been a key advance that users expect when the latest devices are announced each year.
All of which upped the embarrassment for Samsung, when it mistakenly lauded the quality of a viral online video from a Rihanna gig as demonstrating “the power of the Galaxy S24 Ultra,” only to find it was in fact shot on a two-year-old iPhone 13 Pro Max—two generations behind Apple’s latest flagship.
Samsung wrongly suggests S24 behind viral video
A community note quickly followed on X, pointing out that the video was actually recorded on an iPhone—as the person who captured and shared the video had proven, exasperated at the confusion, he publicly shared the metadata to prove he wasn’t lying.
“Shot on an iPhone,” iPhone 13 Pro Max Metadata
This is embarrassing—especially given Samsung’s past sponsorship of Rihanna, but probably not in itself a reason to switch. Even if it suggests Samsung can mistake its own device for a two-year old iPhone, which raises the question as to how much better an iPhone 15 Pro Max would be. But, in reality, the reasons Samsung users might now opt for an iPhone are different.
Whereas cameras were seen as a prime sales message in years gone by, 2024 is set to become the year of AI and only AI. And while that extends to the taking, manipulation and storage of photos, it’s really about generative AI and the ability to port AI chatbots to smartphones.
Samsung’s issue is as much Google as Apple, with the AI clash between Android’s ecosystem and its own playing out. Google is racing ahead with Gemini additions across its services, Samsung is chasing hard with its own Galaxy AI offerings. For users, this risks AI overkill and confusion.
But there’s also a security message buried in here as well. I have warned before about the dangers of metadata and the need to delete that data when photos and videos are shared. Clearly, social media platforms do this anyway—as seen with this story. But if you send media yourself, the metadata can be sent as well. And that can unmask your device—as Samsung knows, as well as your exact location and the time at which you were at that location. Many cheating spouses have made that mistake.
And so, take a lesson from Samsung’s books—and keep that metadata in mind when you share media online, or make rash judgments as to where a photo or video was taken and when.
Meantime, I have approached Samsung for any comments on this story.
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