Technology companies just don’t seem to learn from each others’ mistakes. First it was Samsung Brazil that was caught passing stock images from Getty Images as Galaxy A8 (2018) camera samples, then Huawei was found passing off DSLR images as camera samples for the Nova 3 smartphone. In another similar incident, it is Xiaomi which has now been caught passing off photos taken from the Mi Mix 2S as images shot from the newly-launched Poco F1, the first smartphone from the company’s newest sub-brand.
The original as well as the edited image was turned into a collage and posted by a user on Reddit. Both the images were originally shared by Xiaomi’s global spokesperson Donovan Sung on Instagram. the first image was posted on April 22 and had a “Shot on Mi Mix 2S” watermark on it. The executive shared the same image recently, claiming that it was taken by the Poco F1 smartphone. One eagle-eyed user who goes by the name Faiso333, shared both the pictures.
When we checked the executive’s Instagram handle, we couldn’t see the image which he posted. After being criticised for the faking incident, Sung took the image down from his Instagram handle. When we scrolled all the way to posts from April, we found the original image with the Mi Mix 2S watermark.
This is not the first time that a smartphone company has been caught faking camera samples. Last month, Samsung’s Brazilian arm was caught passing stock images from Getty Images as photos taken from the company’s Galaxy A8 (2018) smartphone’s selfie camera. After the expose, Samsung tried to handle the situation but the damage was already done. Just a few days later, Huawei was caught sharing beautifully captured DSLR camera shots as camera samples in an ad for the Nova 3 in Egypt.
The first such infamous case occurred in 2012 when Nokia was a part of Microsoft. The company misled people when it was promoting the effectiveness of OIS on the Nokia 920. In a video, a couple was seen riding bikes and another guy was capturing the video of the couple. The video was too stable for being captured by a mobile phone back in 2012. Further investigation revealed that the ‘flawless’ video was actually being shot using a professional grade camera from a white van with a complete camera crew.