Samsung on Tuesday compromised a technological faux pas when it issued a promotional tweet from an iPhone, the flagship phone manufactured by a rival in the smartphone market.
The South Korean tech giant published a teaser of its upcoming unpackaged hardware event to a Twitter account managed by the US division of Samsung Mobile.
“With the #SamsungUnpacked approach, we’re working hard to bring you some exciting news. What field of innovation and advancement do you expect to see us reveal?” Ask Samsung in the tweet.
An innocuous message, it was the mode of delivery of the tweet that has caused some online fuss. Whoever posted the short letter to Samsung’s account used an iPhone, an almost unforgivable offense in the eyes of tough fans.
Brand ambassadors from a large number of major smartphone makers have been caught promoting products and services from the iPhone on several occasions, but the slips of company officials are a rarity. In 2013, for example, tennis star David Ferrer used his iPhone to send a complimentary tweet about his Galaxy S4. That same year, former T-Mobile CEO John Legere extolled the Galaxy Note 3, but did so from the iPhone.
More recently, Ksenia Sobchak, who received a payment to endorse Samsung products, was reportedly sued by the company in 2018 for using an iPhone X in public.
Samsung is expected to launch new Galaxy S21 models at the Unpacked event on January 14th. High-end smartphones are expected to include 6.7- and 6.8-inch OLED screens, S-Pen support, Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 SoC or Samsung SoCs Exynos 2100 and other premium components to try to compete with the iPhone 12 of Apple.