Everyone's got an iPhone and that's boring. Break with conformity! Get an iPhone lookalike instead!

HTC's first major commercial for the new One A9 Android Marshmallow handset is all about Apple and the iPhone. The theme of it is a familiar one, turning the tables of Apple's famous "1984" commercial and presenting the iPhone as the boring, gray, generic thing that everyone uses and does. In doing so, HTC is copying the approach that Motorola tried when it introduced the Xoom tablet back in 2011. Of course, this being 2015, HTC has amped up the Apple digs with some expert parkour action (why!?), identikit mannequins (aka dummies) sat around a runway-length dining table, and a pyramidal structure made up of white-painted apples. The video's protagonist proceeds to kick the apples. Reasons remain unknown, but a young lady looks impressed.

HTC's brazen urging to "be different" in this ad — despite the One A9 being the most expertly crafted iPhone clone we've seen — is actually just a follow-up to its A9 promo website, which proclaims it to have "design worth imitating." Well, if nothing else, the design and this marketing campaign are sure to get people talking about HTC again, although it's far from certain that they'll be saying positive things.

Verge Video: HTC One A9 review