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Samsung seems to have just given up on keeping its new folding phones secret at this point
Well the leaks start coming and they don't stop coming
With less than 48 hours to go until Samsung's Galaxy Unpacked event, you'd be forgiven for thinking we're all out of potential leaks flaunting the company's upcoming folding phones. Of course, you'd also be wrong. Following up on its own internal video tease a few weeks ago, Samsung accidentally published an ad on YouTube showing off both the Galaxy Z Flip3 and Z Fold3, in case you need further evidence of what's on the way later this week.
Google's Father's Day commercial runs on your tears
Answer your phone, Jake, I'm not paying to talk to your voicemail!
C'mon Google, you know the traditional way to collect tears from middle-aged fathers is just to play some Harry Chaplin. You didn't have to sit some video editor down and force them to make a minute-long piece of fictional yet relatable one-sided conversations between a dad and his teenage son. But here we are: happy Father's Day, I guess.
Google is officially late to the sourdough party
Google hops on last year's trend in another weird Switch to Pixel ad
Over the last few months, Google has been making increasingly strange commercials trying to convince people to switch from other smartphones (or possibly a banana) to Pixel. The latest, while ostensibly being a guide to transferring your data from another phone, is actually a lightning-fast guide to baking sourdough bread.
Google's ads for this year's Oscars had more emotion than half the nominees
I'm not crying, you're crying
After a string of increasingly weird videos promoting the Pixel phone line, it's almost comforting to see Google return to plucking at your heartstrings. Such is the case with two new Google Search commercials posted to Google's official YouTube channel this weekend, both made for the recent Oscars, and at least one of which aired during the event.
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Samsung's next foldable phone, the Galaxy Z Flip, has already been leaked quite a bit. The company has yet to say anything about the Z Flip publicly... until now, anyway. A commercial for the device aired during the Oscars Academy Awards show tonight, giving us a first look at the phone outside of leaked images and videos.
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We're likely around a month away from the launch of Google's next flagship phone and the leaks are starting to heat up. Even with Google divulging plenty of information — and sharing an official teaser image months before release — the leaks haven't quite matched last year's Pixel 3 debacle, but we probably still know pretty much all there is to know about the Pixel 4 by now.
Google has made countless advertisements for Chromebooks, but none of them have directly pointed out flaws in traditional operating systems like Windows and macOS - until now. The company just released a new Chromebook commercial that calls out its competitors for being annoying, buggy, and slow.
Advertising can get pretty stale these days, so it's always nice to see something different. ASUS took "different" and ran with it, throwing 89 ZenFone 5s on dancer Ian Eastwood to advertise the ZenFone 5/5z. The result is... quite the spectacle.
Super Bowl commercials cost fortunes for companies to run, leading to some of the most invested and creative advertisements you'll see all year. This year's Super Bowl ads are off to a good start, with Amazon already showing its ad for Alexa on YouTube. It turns out that Alexa has quite a few famous substitutes lined up for when she loses her voice.
These days, many advertisements try to be truly different to stand out from the crowd and get people talking. Nokia seems to be attempting this approach with its new ad, which features a guru teaching an apartment renter about the arts of minimalism and 'Phone Shui.' In other words, Nokia is pushing its pure Android angle.
Samsung seems to be angling towards a different type of ad campaign: one that makes fun of competitors' devices. We first saw this (indirectly) with Samsung's 'Screen Reviews' commercial, but this latest 'Growing Up' takes the roasts to a whole other level. Several generations of the iPhone are highlighted here, and it's really very well done.
It's not often we see tech companies throw shade at each other, at least outside of the usual cell network advertisements. The Pixel 2 XL has been receiving some negative publicity lately regarding its display issues, and Samsung has taken up the opportunity to subtly make fun of it in a new commercial.
Samsung has a mixed track record when it comes to commercials - remember that awful ad for the original Galaxy Gear? Samsung's latest phone, the Galaxy S8, was officially revealed today. And the first commercial is pretty good.
As mobile bloggers, watching national carriers with revenue in the billions snip at each other like gossiping high school students is the closest thing we have to a spectator sport. Between Sprint hiring Verizon's old spokesman, T-Mobile continuing its cloying David-versus-Goliath narrative, and Verizon using textbook straw man attacks against both of them in all those Jaime Foxx spots, we can hardly make the popcorn fast enough.
There's nothing that Samsung loves more than putting celebrities in its commercials. It's hardly alone in that regard, but some of the recent entries seem to be more about the celebrities than the actual phones. Case in point: the first TV commercial for the Galaxy Note 7 after the initial announcement press blitz. It features Christoph Waltz, Hollywood's current go-to somewhat creepy German-speaking dude, mildly berating Americans so they'll buy the phone.
On the list of manufacturers with fun and quirky commercial spots, LG doesn't usually come near the top. As far as I can recall, it has always served functional videos, but that strategy wouldn't fly with the "Play" theme of the G5. So it was that Jason Statham, the badass actor who can make your heart drop to your knees with a frown, was cast as the face of the G5 and a sort of psychedelic commercial was born with Jason's face plastered across all the main characters and background actors.
You've heard of Jason Statham, right? That generically rugged-looking guy who shows up in about 50% of the action B-movies in any given summer to sound British and punch people in the face? Well apparently the rugged-punching-British demographic is one that LG would like to win, because they've hired him to promote the G5 in an upcoming series of commercials. They said so in a press release. Yes, a press release for a commercial. Welcome to the 2016 mobile market.
Here's a free tip, would-be criminals: don't tag yourself in photos of an active crime and then post said photos to social media. It's a 21st century problem for those whose leisure activities are just a little bit more than the law will allow, but Motorola has used that interesting situation as a springboard for its latest series of TV ads. The first one, "Photo Opp," is probably the very first time an Old West outlaw has ever been shown with a smartwatch.
I don't consider unboxing videos to be a particularly exciting form of entertainment, but at least they give you an idea what to expect when you bring a gadget home. Well, not all of them fit this mold. T-Mobile's latest video shows employee Des unboxing the LG G5 in the passenger seat of a rally car.
Samsung's marketing team has been hitting it out of the park recently with funny, memorable commercials highlighting the S7's many cool features. A couple of days ago, they posted three new commercials starring Lil Wayne and Wesley Snipes, and I think they are pretty stellar. I could describe them for you, but I wouldn't wan't to spoil the surprise. Watch them for yourself.