Advertising watchdog rules Motorola must withdraw claim that its Atrix handset is the world's most powerful smartphone

This article is more than 9 years old

This article is more than 9 years old

Motorola Mobility, the US mobile company Google is set to acquire for $12.5bn (£7.6bn), has been banned from claiming it makes the world's most powerful smartphones following a ruling by the advertising watchdog.

Motorola ran an a TV ad campaign that claimed the Atrix mobile phone was "the world's most powerful smartphone".

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) received two complaints from fans of Samsung's Galaxy smartphone range claiming that Motorola's Atrix was inferior.

The complainants argued that the Samsung Galaxy S II i9100 had a more powerful processor and said that Motorola's claim to be the fastest was therefore misleading.

Motorola said that in addition to its processing capability, the Atrix had other slick features which, although not promoted in the ad, included a battery 20% more powerful "than all known worldwide competitors" and an ability to "read fingertips" to provide better security and protection.

Motorola said that while the Samsung Galaxy did have a "slightly faster" processor, the combination of Atrix features makes it "the world's most powerful smartphone".

The ASA said that consumers would understand the TV ad to mean that the phone by itself was the world's most powerful smartphone.

The advertising watchdog said that because the Samsung Galaxy posseses a faster processor, Motorola's claim had not been substantiated by evidence in the TV ad.

The ASA banned the ad for breaking advertising code rules relating to misleading advertising, substantiation, exaggeration and comparisons, and ruled that Motorola must not stake claim to being the world's most powerful smartphone again.

Separately, Apple has accused Samsung of "slavishly" copying the design and functionality of its popular iPhone and iPad lines with the Galaxy range of smartphones and tablet computers.

Apple won a preliminary injunction against the Korean electronics giant earlier this month in an acrimonious patent dispute.

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