Tone-deaf Samsung ad is a reminder that smartwatch safety still has a ways to go

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The Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 has SOS emergency features, but that doesn’t equate to having “freedom to exercise at all hours.” | Screenshot: Samsung

Samsung is under fire for a recent ad depicting a woman wearing a Galaxy Watch 4 and Galaxy Buds running alone in the middle of a city at 2AM. Critics have called the ad both “unrealistic” and “tone-deaf” in the wake of the murder of Ashling Murphy, a 23 year old who was killed while running in January in Dublin, Ireland. The ad is oblivious to the dangers of nighttime running, but that makes sense since many smartwatch makers don’t seem to understand how their limited safety features may fail runners.

Samsung has since apologized for the ad, telling BBC Radio 1 that it hadn’t intended to “be insensitive to ongoing conversations around women’s safety” and that “the ‘Night Owls’ campaign was designed with a positive message in mind: to...

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source https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/29/23048309/samsung-smartwatch-ad-emergency-sos

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