Smartphone manufacturers are no stranger to clever marketing tricks because they want to draw attention to their products and thus generate more sales. Some of the more well-known tactics we covered earlier include photo forgery, benchmark scams, and misleading renderings.
However, these aren’t the only examples of sketchy marketing we’ve seen before, and here are seven other high-profile smartphone marketing tactics we’ve come across in the past few years. You can check out our previous list of seedy smartphone marketing tricks at the link.
1. Focus on trade-in pricing
There is nothing inherently wrong with listing trade-in prices – smartphone brands lower the price of a new device if you keep trading in your old phone. The problem arises, however, when companies like Samsung automatically list trade-in prices as the default option when they visit their online stores, with the MSRP crossed out to give the impression of a more traditional money-saver. See the screenshot above to see what we mean.
That feels pretty gross as brands try to make their phones look like they are coming with a traditional cash discount. It would be much better if both trade-in and full-price prices were listed, or if companies actually labeled the trade-in price as such in the same area for instant clarity.
Another marketing ploy we see is companies offering promotional prices and then hiding the right price less noticeably or entirely in marketing / press materials. Again, there is nothing wrong with the promotional prices, but companies could be more transparent about the actual pricing.
2. Advertising models that cannot be bought
Another thing we’ve seen is companies promoting smartphone models that you can’t actually buy. The most prominent example we’ve seen in 2021 is OnePlus, which is promoting the 128GB OnePlus 9 Pro for $ 969 in North America.
Unfortunately, the company delayed the release of this variant and then canceled it, due to problems with the chipset supply. This meant users had to spend $ 1,069 on the 256GB OnePlus 9 Pro option, which increased the price by $ 100. OnePlus did the same for the North 2 in India, announcing a 6GB / 128GB variant for the market, but only offered an 8GB / 128GB variant or higher.
We have some compassion when low-chip issues are actually the cause, but it’s still a disappointing turn of events. Because OEMs get good PR for announcing a low basic price, but what’s the point if you can’t actually buy a device at this price?
3. Focus on pointless metrics
Another marketing ploy used by smartphone brands is to focus on useless metrics in order to stand out from the crowd. In 2020, for example, Samsung offered a 100x “Space Zoom” on its Galaxy S20 Ultra in this regard.
Samsung isn’t the only phone manufacturer to offer ridiculous but inferior zoom levels, as we’ve seen Xiaomi up the ante with the 120x digital zoom on the Mi 10 Ultra. Again, this is a nearly useless feature that feels like it’s been pinned, so the company can say it beat Samsung (and for the marketing synergy with a 120Hz screen and a 120W charge).
We’ve also seen companies like Oppo and Xiaomi focus on features like 120W or 100W charging speeds. This isn’t entirely pointless as in some cases you actually get the chance to charge in less than 20 minutes. However, these speeds often result in much greater battery degradation. Even charging from 50 W to 65 W still delivers super-fast charging times without putting as much strain on the battery over time.
4. Qualifying statements for the best and first
A tactic that has been practiced for years is the tendency of companies to claim qualified first and top placements. This means that the brand claims a very specific first or best performance for marketing purposes.
Sony has been one of the most prominent proponents of this tactic over the past several years, claiming that the Xperia Z2 has “the world’s best camera and camcorder in a waterproof smartphone”. On the one hand, waterproof phones weren’t common at the time, but it still felt like the company was striving for a “world’s best” title.
Cash: Android authority‘s big book on (almost) every smartphone first!
We also see some brands advertise with qualified premieres, such as: B. Realme bragging about the first phone in India with a certain budget SoC. Again, Realme may not be the first company to offer a phone with this chipset worldwide, but a company’s desire to say it does something first – even if it doesn’t mean much in a broader context – is getting old.
One of the more annoying marketing practices today is to add “AI” to the name of each role. Many manufacturers are guilty of this behavior and cover everything from hardware functions to software functions.
We have seen several brands do this for their “AI camera” modes, which essentially boils down to smarter scene and object recognition. Sure, machine learning is used here, but scene recognition has been around for years anyway. However, that doesn’t stop companies from offering “AI” modes or “AI camera” branding.
We’ve seen many brands add AI to the name of features, which gives clear indications of AI smarts in the game.
We have also seen companies like Asus offer “AI charging,” which adjusts a phone’s charging rate based on previous charging habits. Now other phone brands simply call it smart charging or optimized battery charging. With the Zenfone 5Z from 2018, the company has probably reached its “peak” in this regard. This phone offered AI loading, AI Boost (a kind of feature), AI Scene (scene detection), AI Ringtone (adjusting ringtone volume based on ambient noise), and AI Photo Learning (suggested edits). Sigh.
People like Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi, LG and others also advertise features like “AI face unlock“And” AI portrait “when they only mean that they are using software algorithms. Perhaps the thought is that suggesting “AI” in the name makes people forget that these aren’t hardware controlled features (like 3D Face Unlock).
6. Falsify the performance figures
We’ve already covered benchmark scams in our first overview of questionable smartphone marketing tricks, but this post focuses on performance issues of a different kind. Specifically, some companies have offered state-of-the-art silicon in their flagship phones, but they’re aggressively targeting them Battery life throttled.
Probably the greatest example of all time was Apple’s Batterygate, in which the iPhone manufacturer quietly throttles older iPhones with exhausted batteries. That way, the company could get better endurance on phones with older batteries.
In principle, there is nothing wrong with that either, especially if you don’t notice any performance problems. The problem, however, is that these companies are not always transparent with this approach, which essentially prevents consumers from using all of the power at their disposal. The OnePlus case was particularly interesting as one might wonder what the point of buying a brand new high performance phone when the heavy lifting CPU cores in many apps aren’t even used.
7. Update commitments as marketing props
Hadlee Simons / Android Authority
Outside of Google, Samsung is currently the king of updates to Android, offering four years of security patches and three years of operating system updates. The commitment applies to flagships that will appear from 2019, foldable devices, tablets and even the last two generations of selected models of the Galaxy A series (e.g. Galaxy A51 from, Galaxy A71 and higher, Galaxy A90 from).
There is no doubt that Samsung is taking advantage of the marketing benefits of this move, and several other manufacturers have announced revised update guidelines as well. Unfortunately, there are brands like Oppo, Vivo, and even OnePlus, all of which lag behind Samsung in terms of their implementations – so much so that they feel a bit like cheap public relations.
In Oppo’s case, the Find X3 series will get OS updates for three years, but last year’s Find X2 series or any mid-range devices will be missing out. Meanwhile, Vivo announced that the upcoming X70 series would receive OS upgrades for three years, but the X60 family that launched earlier this year or their mid-range offerings wouldn’t be as lucky. OnePlus – traditionally the leader in software promises – recently announced that the OnePlus 8 series and above will receive three years of operating system updates and four years of security patches, but that doesn’t apply to its Nord series and other budget phones.
As disappointing as it is, we can understand to some extent why brands would limit three OS updates to flagship phones given the cost of these devices. On the flip side, it’s hard to see Oppo and Vivo’s approaches as anything other than a way to get simple praise for their upcoming releases while neglecting their less-than-year-old flagships.
That’s it for our look at seven other questionable marketing tricks from smartphone manufacturers. Are there any others you would like to add to the list? Let us know below.