Huawei caught cheating again.

Huawei’s latest deceptive phone ads use the same old fake camera trick

The cameras in Huawei smartphones are class-leading. Yet, the company was caught again using a photo shot with a DSLR in an ad to promote pictures produced with their handsets. 

Best, of all, the gaffe was discovered by the winner of an iPhone photography contest.

The photos, made by Su Tie with a Nikon D850, appeared in a video to promote a photography contest that claimed to show work produced by Huawei smartphones. Just plain fraud.

The mistake was discovered by Huapeng Zhao, who placed second in the Photographer of the Year category of the iPhone Photography Awards in 2018. He thought the photos looked familiar and quickly found them on the website 500px, according to the tech culture website Abacus. 

Huawei cameras more than capable

Huawei has since apologized on the social media platform Weibo and removed the photos from the video. The company blamed the mistake on the “oversight” of a picture editor who used photos that were “wrongly marked.” 

But again, this begs the question: Given this isn’t the first Huawei ad to include DSLR photos, why have photos on file unless they were shot with a Huawei smartphone?

Two Huawei handsets have the two highest rankings for camera performance as tested by the independent French lab DxOMark. Five of the top 10 places belong to Huawei or its sister brand Honor. 

Apple’s iPhone 11 Pro Max is the only iPhone in the top 10, currently holding the number nine spot. 

The Apple iPhone set the bar long ago for smartphone photography and has since seen competitors try to match the quality of its cameras. 

The iPhone is arguably the world’s most popular smartphone camera thanks in part to marketing campaigns that feature actual iPhone photos. 

The campaign started with the iPhone 6, featuring iPhone photos on billboards and magazine ads. Apple runs “Shot on iPhone” campaigns with each new generation, including TV commercials.

A more recent campaign showcases video shot on iPhone XS:

Of all that Huawei tries to copy from Apple, advertising featuring genuine photos made with Huawei phones is not one of them. 

Prior to this more recently blunder, Huawei got busted for using DSLR images in smartphone ads in 2019, 2018 and 2016. Huawei is not the only Apple competitor to misrepresent photograph in an ad. A Twitter user in 2018 discovered Samsung used stock photos for two Twitter ads for the Galaxy A8 camera.

Thanks to Cult of Mac for the pointer.