Samsung’s marketing team is back at it, and this time, the punchline is clothing. And, of course, Apple. A new ad spot called “A Real Upgrade” sees the company take direct aim at Apple’s two biggest pain points: the absence of real AI tools and the still-mythical foldable iPhone.
Yet another round of Android vs. iPhone
Can’t we all just get along?
The short video shows two friends sitting together poolside. One of them is Dylan Efron, Zac Efron’s younger brother who has made a name for himself by appearing on “The Traitors” as well as being frequently shirtless. Efron gets a text from his agent who needs a headshot of him with a shirt on. His iPhone-toting buddy, stuck without generative tools, tries to conjure a shirt by holding up objects over Efron’s torso and snapping photos. Efron, meanwhile, opens his Galaxy Z Fold 7 to an amazed reaction from the friend, “Did you just unfold that?” and uses Galaxy AI to digitally slap a shirt on his bare chest. The spot is goofy, but the message is loud and clear: Samsung phones can do things iPhones simply can’t.
This isn’t new territory for Samsung. The company has made a sport out of mocking Apple, whether over missing hardware features (remember the headphone jack?) or slower software rollouts. Just this summer, Samsung was live-tweeting digs at Apple during WWDC while Tim Cook and company were actively presenting iOS 26. Paired with Google’s Shorty Award-winning BestPhonesForever series, the Android side seems pretty committed to keeping the rivalry spicy in 2025.
Slow-but-real progress for Cupertino
Source: YouTube via The Verge
A screenshot of a thumbnail Apple accidentally uploaded to YouTube, before left-justifying the text.
To be fair, Apple hasn’t done itself many favors lately. Apple Intelligence — the company’s big swing at catching up to Galaxy AI and Google Gemini — has been hampered by delays and underwhelming real-world performance. Siri is still Siri, which is to say, nowhere near the contextual powerhouse Google Assistant used to be. And as Samsung and Google keep iterating on foldables, Apple’s lack of a competing device grows harder to ignore.
That said, it won’t be one-way traffic forever. Reports suggest Apple has a foldable iPhone in development for next year, and the company is still working to bring its AI features up to the standard it promised at WWDC in June. When those devices finally land, Samsung’s trolling may need sharper material.
Of course, none of this is going to end the OS tribalism that’s defined the mobile space for over a decade. Android versus iOS has always been more about loyalty than logic, and brands like Samsung only pour more fuel on the fire. But in the meantime, ads like this keep the fight entertaining.
