Samsung UK Offers Free Galaxy S Devices to iPhone 4 Users

By: Charles Cooper
Topics: In The News ,; Tech Talk

After getting called out by Steve Jobs, Samsung's United Kingdom branch has responded with the sort of marketing gimmick sure to get under the skin of Apple's Supreme Leader: Free Galaxy S handsets to disgruntled iPhone 4 owners.

Samsung extended the offer by Twitter and Facebook to a "cross section" of iPhone 4 customers who have complained about reception trouble with their Apple smartphones

(Credit: Samsung)

"Recently there has been a real increase in online activity from consumers dissatisfied with some of our competitors' products," Samsung said in a press release. "We decided to contact a cross section of individuals to offer them a free Samsung Galaxy S as a replacement, as we're confident that once people have the phone in their hands, they'll see how impressive it is for themselves."

The marketing ploy apparently got going on Wednesday but only came to wider public notice today. Wired UK was the first to spot the news.

During a press conference he hosted last Friday, Jobs said that Apple's smartphone was not unique in encountering intermittent reception issues. He further claimed that devices made by other manufacturers also ran into a similar issue. He mentioned Samsung as one of those companies.

Holding up Samsung's device to reporters, Jobs proceeded to reproduce what he said was the same reception degradation problem reported by some iPhone 4 customers.

"Samsung Omnia II -- it's got 4 bars to start... we grip it in a not unusual way... this one has a long hysteresis in their algorithm..." We're waiting...Starts off with 4 bars... and the time it takes for the bars to go down has to do with the algorithm... so it goes down to zero bars, and then it goes back up." Definitely looks like the same behavior."

That claim irritated Samsung and several other smartphone vendors. In various statements issued in the last week, they called Jobs out as misrepresenting their products' capabilities in this increasingly heated summer of smartphone smack talk. And in its new advertising campaign, Samsung made sure to mock the iPhone 4''s signal strength issues, as you can see in the sample below:

Charles Cooper is an executive editor at CNET News. He has covered technology and business for more than 25 years, working at CBSNews.com, the Associated Press, Computer & Software News, Computer Shopper, PC Week, and ZDNet. E-mail Charlie.