Samsung hits iPhone 5 with cheeky attack video

ABOVE: Samsung's new iPhone 5 attack video.

Samsung goes on front foot with iPhone 5 attack ad

Sept 18: Samsung has gone on the front foot in the US with an iPhone 5 attack ad.

It's great stuff to see a company with the moxie to take on Apple head-on – even if sniping at Apple's proprietary connector is like hitting the side of a barn.

Not everything's a bullseye, however.

Whether you buy Samsung's bigger-is-better argument comes down to personal taste. 

And with tap-and-go mobile payments forever six months away, I'm not sure anyone will miss NFC (in fact, the absence of NFC from the iPhone 5 could very well kill it off as a mobile phone payment technology – and we're talking real-world shops, right now kids, not a couple of show pony pilots).

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Also on the hardware front, it would be great if New Zealand Galaxy S3 customers got a choice beyond the entry-level 16GB option.

Storage does matter on mobiles in the world of apps and multimedia files and no-one actually shuffles micro-SD cards in and out to juggle space.

Likewise, I'm not sure if a removeable battery is an advantage. When was the last time you swapped out a cellphone battey? For me, it's just makes the phone less robust.

Still, there's no denying that coupled with Google's Android 4.0 (aka Ice Cream Sandwich, firmware upgradeable to Android 4.1, aka Jelly Bean), the S3 has some neat tricks the iPhone 5 doesn't.

Things like shake-to-update, or to change your mind and call someone you were going to txt simply by lifting the phone to your ear.

And while mobile shopping options are thin on the ground, the S3 has a nice deployment of wireless technology with its feature that lets you simply bump two phones together to transfer a photo.

Lastly, for all its aggression, Samsung's attack ad doesn't raise my key fear about the iPhone 5.

Hardware-wise, I think the Apple's new handset looks pretty tasty. 

But I'm unsettled that it comes with iOS 6 (a free upgrade for older iPhones later this month).

It's option whether to upgrade an older model to iOS 6, but it's installed on the iPhone 5 by default. And I don't like the way Apple has used iOS 6 to push YouTube and Google Maps out of the magic circle.

As a Google Apps user, the increasing hostility between one-time partners Apple and Google gives me the willies.