Survivor: Phone Edition

When people think about cell phones they most likely say they are either an iPhone or a Samsung person. For years now these two companies have been trying to out do each other in the smart phone market by coming out with new, better improved products. Each year Apple and Samsung come out with newer versions of their phones promising us easier access to our important documents, mail, Facebook, and of course twitter, all while being able to talk or video chat with our friends and family.Consequently each year they have people coming out, sometimes even waiting for days, to obtain what they believe is the greatest advancement in phone history. A couple of years I too would have agreed with people who thought like this, about the iPhone in particular, because smart phone technology was a new thing that I believed was going to go far.

Five years ago when the first iPhone appeared on the market it was seen as the greatest thing ever invented because it could do so much.  No phone had ever been able to access so much information and none had ever  had a touch screen, so naturally people were intrigued with the iPhone. The creation of the iPhone opened a whole new market for cells phones, each company that has released one since the iPhone was released in 2007 claims to have a more superior product. Consequently we are now being constantly assaulted by advertisements trying to entice us to buy the latest edition of said smart phone. Each fall its the newest edition of the iPhone, which people seem more willing to buy because with the release of the new iPhone comes new commercials made by Samsung trying to deter people away from the iPhone. This advertisement released by Samsung, for instance, ridicules iPhone aficionados who wait in line for a product that is not top grade. Their excitement for a product that has nothing new, that is slow, that does not have a big screen; that is just not worth it is displayed throughout the whole advertisement. By including the older couple, it is inferred that this phone has become a thing of the past... again nothing new.

So what to do with such advertisement? Some will listen or believe it, while others will still camp out and rejoice when they obtain the latest iPhone. This new advertisement simply proves how phone marketers are always trying to make a profit out of our desire to stand out as individuals who can afford the latest trend. Last year it was a talking phone, this year it seems to be one that can be used to transfer information by simply tapping two phones together. Marketers know that nothing they release now is new to us, yet they package their new product and sell it to us via advertisements claiming that it is the best knowing that we will most likely believe what they say. Having a bigger screen does not make one phone better than the other, they just want us to believe that it does.