What the banned iPhone advert should really look like

By Matthew Sparkes

Posted on 26 Nov 2008 at 13:23

Apple was forced to pull a television advert for the iPhone 3G today after the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) decided it exaggerated the speed of mobile browsing.

In the 30-second clip the iPhone is shown loading a webpage, finding its current location in Google Maps, opening a PDF from an email and finally taking a phone call.

The ASA concluded that the iPhone cannot do what was shown in the mere 29 seconds afforded in the advert, ruling that it was misleading. So we decided to replicate the clip to see how long the advert should really be. See the video below:

The video shows our iPhone 3G on the left, and the banned Apple advert in the top-right corner

The video was shot using a standard iPhone 3G over a Wi-Fi connection, using sites and files similar to those shown in the advert.

The results are quite clear; the advert shows the tasks taking just 29 seconds to complete, while our test showed that it actually takes almost five times as long, at two minutes and 21 seconds.

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