Chinese technology giant Huawei has fallen into the habit of making tall claims about the capabilities of its smartphones, particularly in the camera section and later having to tender apologies. Unfortunately, this has happened repeatedly damaging the reputation of the company in the market. The curious thing in all this is the company manufactures smartphones with excellent photography functions and it doesn’t have to go out of the way to promote them on these lines.
The latest gaffe has occurred in a video that Huawei has released in promotion of a photography competition and inviting entries. The video has a collage of images which the video claims were all shot with Huawei smartphones. Now, an ace photographer spotted an image among these which had appeared elsewhere and realised that it was actually a photo clicked on a DSLR camera and uploaded on the 500px website. It was shot with a Nikon D850 and carried a title “Like a Diamond”.
When pointed out, Huawei is reported to have acted strangely. The company did issue an apology on the Chinese social media site Weibo and blamed it on an editor. However, subsequently, the promo video kept running with that image in it; only the claim that these were clicked with Huawei smartphones has been edited out.
Observers point out that something similar had happened earlier, when the company launched its Huawei P30 Pro smartphone. It had used a photo shot with a DSLR camera as being shot with the Huawei P30 Pro. Huawei was unapologetic at that time. There was yet another incident with the Nova 3i where a model poses for a selfie and the background clearly reveals the presence of professional photography equipment negating the claim that the image was being captured by the smartphone.
As mentioned, Huawei really doesn’t have to do all these since it can make smartphones with good photography capabilities.