The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) of the UK has prohibited Motorola from using the phrase “the world’s most powerful smartphone” in its Atrix commercials. The ruling was issued in response to a complaint by two Samsung users who said the claim was misleading.
The Motorola Atrix runs on a dual core 1 GHz Processor whereas the Samsung Galaxy SII processor is a dual core 1.2 GHz engine. Thus the Advertising Standards Authority concluded that Motorola could not claim Motorola Atrix was the most powerful smartphone in the world.
The ASA website said, “The ASA noted Motorola said, in the context of the ad, the word ‘powerful’ was used to refer to the combination of technical features of the Atrix. We noted they said when the phone was docked into the unique HD dock or the standalone Lapdock it powered a full desktop Browser whilst providing support for cloud-based computing and a full virtual Windows desktop. However, while we acknowledged the ad showed the phone being used with other associated accessories, we considered viewers would understand the claim ‘The world’s most powerful smartphone’, along with a close-up of the phone, to mean the phone, in isolation, was the most powerful smartphone.”
Motorola Atrix was launched around the same time as the Samsung Galaxy SII was launched in the UK.