iPhone 4 Wins "World's Thinnest Smartphone" Rights Against Samsung

Quick-fire question: What's the thinnest smartphone on the market? If you said the Samsung Galaxy S II then you should probably immediately write a check to Apple, since Samsung has just been smacked down in the UK over suggestions that it, not its rival, produced the most waifish smartphone. The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) sided with Apple amid the company's complaints that Samsung wasn't measuring the thickest point on the Galaxy S II in its comparisons.

Instead, the company argued, Samsung was quoting the depth of the main body of the device, in its claims to have produced an 8.49mm thick smartphone. While that accounts for the majority of the handset's length, it ignores the bulge at the base of the Galaxy S II, which is 9.91mm thick.

That makes it 0.61mm deeper than the iPhone 4's 9.3mm thickness, with Apple arguing "that consumers would not be interested in the thinnest part of the device, but in its overall measurements, as these would, for example, affect whether the device could fit into a pocket or a purse." The company's claims that the iPhone 4 was the "world's thinnest smartphone" therefore made sense, the authority decided.

Since it was Apple's claim, not Samsung's, that was being protested, there will be no obvious repercussions for either firm. It's unclear who made the initial complaint to the ASA, whether it was Samsung itself or another interested party.

[via Guardian; thanks iPhone Help for the size correction!]