Motorola issued its first statement since being penalized by the National Council for Advertising Self-Regulation (Conar) for disseminating misleading data about its smartphones. The exclusivity of the revelation was provided by Tecnoblog. Last Saturday (09/26), the company declared it maintains its 'commitment to transparency and clarity of information,' yet the data accessible on its own official store demonstrates the opposite.
The issue arose about a year and a half ago when the brand began promoting phones with the specification 'up to 24 GB of RAM.' To reach this figure, Motorola added traditional physical RAM with virtual RAM, a practice considered atypical in the Brazilian market. This situation was forwarded to Conar's Ethics Council, which unanimously decided that the company needed to adjust how information is presented.
In a note sent to Tecnoblog, Motorola alleged that 'the change required by Conar had already been implemented in our own channels since the beginning of August.' However, this claim does not correspond to reality. The Tecnoblog reporting team checked the day before (09/25) and found several products whose descriptions violated Conar guidelines.
It was observed that Motorola modified some of these pages during the same Friday, immediately after the news was published exclusively by Tecnoblog and other press outlets covering the case. Thus, the deadline mentioned in the company's response lacks factual basis.
When contacting Motorola's communications department with further questions on the matter, the company chose not to respond, keeping the channel of dialogue open.
Motorola's statement also faces questions regarding the claim that combining physical RAM and virtual RAM constitutes a 'market standard.' The journalist, who has covered the mobile device sector for over ten years, stated he has never seen such a practice become established. On the contrary, press colleagues and Tecnoblog readers had already criticized this calculation in previous reports.
The company argued that this format 'is still used by other manufacturers, competitors of Motorola.' This assertion was confirmed after verification conducted on Saturday (09/26), as similar cases were identified on the product pages of Xiaomi and Jovi. However, the websites of Apple, Samsung, Realme, and Oppo did not present the same problem.
There is no confirmation yet whether Conar will issue an opinion on analogous situations. It is important to note that Conar is a non-governmental body, without judicial or police power, but its decisions are strictly respected by media and advertising sectors, with recourse against such deliberations being possible.
Motorola mentioned in a note that it would analyze the decision's content 'to evaluate additional actions.' The core of the controversy lies in the distinction between physical RAM and virtual RAM. In simple terms, physical RAM requires a dedicated chip to store data processed by the device, integrating with the hardware. Virtual RAM uses a technique that simulates additional memory by employing the device's internal storage, being a software function intended to optimize overall performance and enable the simultaneous execution of more applications.
Although this functionality is present in many devices sold in Brazil, tests conducted by Tecnoblog indicated only a slight benefit when the RAM boost feature was active, which is positively perceived by the consumer during times of higher demand.
It should be noted that the focus of the Conar process is not technical, but rather the communication methodology. The Ethics Council unanimously determined that Motorola's approach needed to be revised. Tecnoblog found out that the process ran for several weeks before reaching this conclusion on Thursday (09/24).
