Ladbrokes has a bit of fun with smartphone punters

The UK land and online betting group Ladbrokes has successfully drawn attention to its mobile services by mounting a fun promo to see how fast users of different brands of smartphone could solve brain-teaser problems that included pattern recognition and code cracking.

The test involved a thousand smartphone users, who were challenged to complete seven online puzzles in a race to see which brand owned by the users came out of the competition with the fastest times.

Apple, Google, Samsung, HTC, Nokia and Blackberry were represented in the competition, with the overall winner the Apple users with an overall average problem-solving time of 94 seconds for the seven brain-teasers, although a Samsung user clocked the fastest time, correctly finishing the test in just 47 seconds.

The overall results were:

iPhone users 94 seconds;
Google users, 99 seconds;
Samsung users, 103;
HTC, 105;
Nokia, 109;
Blackberry, 118.

Industry observers have commented that the results should be viewed in the fun spirit of the promo, and are certainly no indication of intelligence, as one UK tabloid newspaper proclaimed.

A writer in a rival publication had a better grasp of the promo, noting:

“One of the reasons the test should not be taken too seriously is that there is no penalty for wrong answers; users could simply keep clicking until they got the right answer from a choice of four for each problem.”

In its mobile “Test of Wits” Ladbrokes advised participants that speed was of the essence.

“You will only move onto the next question once you have answered the question you are on correctly. Once you have answered the questions correctly you will receive your time.”