How Tech Companies Lie to You.

Tech companies often employ deceptive marketing tactics, using clever wording, hidden asterisks, and data manipulation to present minimal changes as significant advancements. This summary will expose some of these common deceptions, starting with the ubiquitous "up to" claim. The phrase "up to" has replaced specific improvement percentages. For example, "up to two times faster" or "up to eight more hours" are common claims. This phrasing allows companies to advertise large numbers without being legally liable if the actual improvement is much smaller. Any statistic beginning with "up to" is essentially meaningless for practical comparison, as it only guarantees that the performance will not exceed that maximum, not that it will consistently reach it. Consumers should disregard such claims and seek specific performance data relevant to their intended use. Another deceptive practice is the creation of "imaginary specs," where companies combine the best individual specifications from different versions of a product into a single, misleading presentation. For instance, a product might advertise a maximum performance number alongside a minimum starting price, even though these two specifications are not available in the same configuration. An example is the Rivian R1T website, which promotes 420 miles of range and 0 to 60 mph in under 2.5 seconds, starting at under $74,000. However, the 420-mile range version has a slower 0-60 time, and the 2.5-second version costs $30,000 more with less range. The $73,000 model offers neither of these top-tier specs. Furthermore, even advertised EV range claims can be misleading. While laws govern accuracy, companies often present ranges achieved under optimal, specific conditions, such as with particular wheels and tires, leading to a significantly lower real-world range. Companies also invent entirely new specifications to prevent direct comparison with competitors and justify higher prices. A prominent example is Apple's "unified memory" for RAM. While their RAM is integrated into the chip, offering some efficiency benefits, it also means the CPU and GPU share a single, smaller pool of memory. This contrasts with many Windows laptops that have dedicated graphics cards with their own additional RAM. Apple often claims that 8 GB of unified memory is equivalent to 16 GB on Windows, which is not truly accurate, as 8 GB remains a hard cap on multitasking capacity. This rebranding makes RAM seem like a complex, proprietary feature, allowing Apple to offer less of it and charge more for upgrades. The TV market is another area rife with invented specs. Terms like "motion rate 120" from brands like Hisense do not indicate a 120 Hz refresh rate, but rather refer to their motion smoothing software. Similarly, terms like Hisense ULED, Samsung QLED, or LG QNED are invented to sound similar to OLED, even though they are typically cheaper LCD technologies. Beyond invented specifications, some advertised measurements are numerically false due to outdated conventions. For example, "1-inch camera sensors" are not 1 inch in any dimension. This naming convention dates back to vacuum tubes used in pre-digital cameras, where a 1-inch tube produced an image area of about 16mm diagonally. Modern 1-inch type sensors maintain this diagonal size, making "1-inch" a marketing term rather than an actual measurement. Similarly, "1.5K displays" on smartphones do not have 1500 pixels in any dimension. While 4K and 8K refer to horizontal resolution, "1080p" refers to vertical resolution and is often misleadingly called "1K." "1.5K" then becomes a vague term for a resolution between 1080p and 1440p, creating unnecessary confusion. Increasingly, new product launches focus on vaguely defined software features rather than significant hardware changes. For instance, at a Samsung Galaxy S24 event, considerable time was spent discussing new Samsung AI features and "Circle to Search." However, "Circle to Search" is also available on Google and Xiaomi phones and is not exclusive to Samsung, despite being presented as a revolutionary feature enabled by a deep partnership. Companies also frequently promote features as new to their latest device, without mentioning that these same features will be rolled out to older models, making an upgrade seem more compelling than it is. An example is a "new Bixby" feature positioned as a perk of the Galaxy S26 series, which also runs on the Galaxy S23. When comparing new products, companies often benchmark them against much older models to exaggerate improvements. Apple is notorious for this, comparing its latest M5 generation MacBook Pros (released in 2026) to M1 chips (released in 2020-2021), claiming "up to eight times faster AI performance." This comparison to a 5-6 year old product is misleading, as it avoids showing the incremental improvements over the immediately preceding generation, which are often only 5-10% in real-world use. Smartphone glass durability claims also employ a similar trick. Companies often boast about new glass being "twice as shatter resistant" one year, and then "twice as scratch resistant" the next. This appears as continuous, massive improvement, but scratch resistance and shatter resistance are inversely related. Making glass harder for scratch resistance makes it more brittle, while making it softer for shatter resistance makes it more prone to scratches. Therefore, companies often prioritize one aspect each year, making it seem like a significant overall leap when it's a trade-off. Another subtle deception is the "efficiency improvement trap." When a company claims a chip offers a "23% boost" in performance and "20% more efficiency," it implies both faster performance and longer battery life. However, if the extra efficiency is entirely used to achieve the higher performance, the battery life will remain the same. So, the user gains performance but not necessarily extended battery life. Even claims about premium materials like "surgical grade stainless steel" or "aerospace grade aluminum" are often technically true but misleading. These materials are common and used in everyday items like kitchen sinks or Razor scooters, not just high-end tech. The terms are used to evoke a sense of exclusivity and quality that isn't inherently unique to the product. Companies also manipulate which specifications they highlight. For example, phone and laptop thickness is often advertised at the product's thinnest point, ignoring camera bumps or other protruding elements, which define the actual maximum thickness relevant for fitting into bags or pockets. The Honor Magic V5 was marketed as the "world's slimmest foldable," but this measurement excluded the camera bump and the outer and inner screen protectors, making it appear slimmer than it was in reality. Screen brightness is another area of an "arms race" for the highest "peak nit" number. However, peak brightness often refers to the brightness of a single pixel under specific HDR content and direct sunlight for a few seconds. This figure doesn't reflect typical day-to-day brightness. A phone advertising 6,000 nits peak brightness might not appear any brighter in regular use than one advertising 2,600 nits. "Typical brightness" is a more useful metric. For phone cameras, companies often emphasize megapixel count over sensor size. While resolution beyond a certain point has minimal impact on phone photo quality, sensor size is crucial for capturing light and detail. Samsung phones, for instance, have boasted 200-megapixel resolutions for several generations, yet still shoot actual photos at 12 megapixels. Maximum digital zoom magnification is also heavily marketed, despite having no correlation with camera quality. A phone claiming "140 times ultra zoom" simply crops an image further, resulting in a low-resolution, smudged photo, unlike optical zoom. Finally, the "shot on a smartphone" trope is often misleading. While some companies have been caught using professional DSLR photos, even legitimate examples often involve extensive external hardware like stabilization rigs, massive lenses, filters, and professional lighting and set design. This defeats the purpose of inspiring users to take great photos with just the phone in their pocket, as the final image is often a result of a highly artificial and expensive setup that disables many of the phone's built-in features. In conclusion, consumers should approach tech marketing with skepticism. Not every product needs annual upgrades, and many advertised "improvements" are either incremental, misleading, or outright deceptive. Understanding these common tactics can help consumers make more informed purchasing decisions.