Internet erupts after Huawei is caught faking photos again

You’d think Huawei would have learnt from its past mistakes when it comes to its smartphone marketing campaigns. You’d think that fielding some of the best smartphone cameras around would encourage it to use them for the promotional pics. Or that previous incidents would see it using a disclaimer like ‘images simulated’. But no. Once again the company’s been caught using images shot on DSLRs to promote an upcoming device. In this instance, the upcoming P30 Pro smartphone that’s expected to have some serious camera chops.

Huawei recently uploaded some posters to its official Weibo account (China’s equivalent of Facebook) as part of a teaser campaign for the upcoming P30 Pro’s cameras. Not only did it turn out the pics were shot on a DSLR, but at least some of them are stock images and not even Huawei’s own shots…

Putting stock in stock

GadgetMatch found this out by doing a reverse image search which revealed that a photograph featuring a young child with duckling, is too similar for comfort to a photo originally from a photographer’s 2009 portfolio. An image of an erupting volcano, meanwhile, turns out to be a stock image from Getty Images.

What makes this so controversial is that the P30 Pro is expected to include insane camera features, including four cameras, a periscope-style selfie lens, and 7x zoom (wowser). Surely Huawei would do well to spend the cash shooting sample images on the device? Alternatively, it’s easy enough to stipulate that the images are simulated and not actually from the device. Also, given their history of faking shots and video footage, Huawei has to expect that some people will scrutinise its images to check their legitimacy.

In August last year Huawei also faked promotional images in its Nova 3 commercial. But at least in that instance it produced the images itself.

Still expecting greatness

We’re sure Huawei took the necessary steps to license the images for the P30 campaign, but there’s no denying its lack of admission about their origins feels misleading. We’re also pretty sure the P30’s actual hardware is going to be killer, going on the P20 Pro and Mate 20 Pro‘s outstanding offerings.

Nonetheless, we’ll find out when Huawei announces its upcoming Huawei P30 Pro on 26 March. And shortly thereafter we’ll post pictures taken by us with the new phones ourselves… we promise.

[UPDATE: A Huawei representative sent us the following statement regarding the latest image snafu – “We’ve been made aware that there might have been some misunderstanding regarding our recent HUAWEI P30 Series teaser posters. We would like to reiterate that those are, in fact, only teaser posters, and are only intended to hint at the unique new features that will come with the HUAWEI P30 Series. Huawei has acquired the licenses to the original images and the posters are artistic renditions of said features only. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank the media for their interest in our posters. We have much to announce in the coming weeks. Please stay tuned!”]

Source: GadgetMatch and GSMArena