Is it just because of the camera? Is it because it comes in new, prettier colors? Is it merely because it comes from your preferred ecosystem jailer? Or could it be that, at least sometimes, you buy it just because it’s new? The likes of Apple and Samsung seem to believe that all they need to do is have an event and show you a film with young, happy people skateboarding/dancing/skydiving and taking pictures. Yet with Samsung’s Galaxy folding phones, at least there’s a new shape, a new form, a new attitude. Therefore, I was full of excitement to see how Samsung would entice customers to its fold. (My apologies.) Oddly, it released an ad that offers a disturbing reason to buy the Z Fold 3: buy it so that you can ignore everything else around you. Here we see barbarians battling away on the streets of New York. Which, to be fair, they do all the time.
However, our male hero, seated in the back of his highly sophisticated Uber/limousine – well, not everyone can afford a Z Fold 3 – doesn’t notice that the barbarians are banging into the car, perhaps damaging its perfection.
Lordy, they’re fighting on the hood and generally destroying what’s left of the city. Our hero, though, is so cool that he’s entirely focused on his folding screen and doesn’t care what’s happening out there. Oh, now we get it; this is merely a dramatization of what our hero is watching on his phone. This, Samsung claims, shows that the Z Fold 3 offers an unusually “immersive” experience. Wait a minute; I hear several barbarians cry. I thought tech companies were concerned that people were becoming too attached to their phones. They worry we’re insufficiently aware of our surroundings.  The very reverend Tim Cook insists that spending too much time on your phone is a terrible, terrible thing. Yet here is Samsung selling immersiveness, when it could have been selling, oh, the wonderful aesthetics, the ingenious mechanics and the more efficient productivity levels of this phone. But no. Samsung wants you to buy this phone so that you can ignore the world. It’s not very hopeful, is it?