The Chinese tech giant Huawei recently promoted a photography contest via a video featuring impressive pictures that were supposedly taken from Huawei smartphones.
However, a few days after the video was uploaded, one of the participants Jamie-hua, aka Huapeng Zhao, pointed out that some of the images were actually shot on a DSLR camera. Zhao explained that the pictures looked familiar, so he decided to check them out. Upon investigation, he discovered that the images were taken using a US$3,000 Nikon D850 camera and not a Huawei smartphone. The images are available on the online photography community platform 500px.
Huawei, acknowledging its fault, apologized for miscommunication, saying:
Apologies: In our recently uploaded “Huawei Theme New Image Community” promotional video, we selected more than 30 works by multiple photographers. We hope to encourage everyone to share more works with the community. Due to negligence in the work of the editor, at the end of the video, it was incorrectly marked that the work was taken by Huawei mobile phones.
We sincerely apologize to everyone here, and sincerely thank the enthusiastic netizen @Jamie-hua for your correction. We have updated the video. In the future, we will be more conscientious and meticulous, to prevent this from happening and to live up to the love of consumers.
The company has now updated the original video and removed the line that says the photos were taken with Huawei phones. Although it still says ‘they were drawn from Huawei’s Next-Image community.’ When asked about it, a Huawei Spokesperson clarified that the rules of contest state, “you can publish photos taken with any equipment in the Next-Image community.”
This is not the first time Huawei has been accused of using DSLR photos to promote its smartphone cameras.
In 2016, Huawei admitted to using a photo shot on a Canon EOS 5D Mark III DSLR camera to promote its P9 phone. In 2018, a Reddit user pointed out that a selfie shown in a Huawei Nova 3 phone commercial appeared to have been taken by a DSLR camera, to which Huawei replied that the images were for reference only. Later on, in January 2019, Huawei Mate 20X promo camera photos turned out to be from a Nikon DSLR. Huawei posted an apology for this as well.
Lets hope Huawei is able to avoid such “accidents” in the future.
