Huawei Was Caught Using a Pro Camera to Fake Smartphone Photos

Huawei Was Caught Using a Pro Camera to Fake Smartphone Photos 

Huawei might make decent smartphones, but its marketing and advertising campaigns have, multiple times, been struck by controversy. That continues today, as an actor's social media post revealed that the company faked smartphone photos with a professional DSLR camera for an advertisement in Egypt. 

In the ad (embedded below), a couple takes selfies at a party and at home with the Huawei Nova 3. The Huawei video shows a rapid succession of moments in which the couple prepares to take the selfie, then shows the final photos as snapshots between moments. As it turns out, though, the photos were taken on a DSLR camera—the type of dedicated (and not-at-all-tied-to-a-smartphone) camera used by professional photographers.

Reddit user AbdullahSab3 discovered that Sarah Elshamy, one of the actors in the video, posted some behind-the-scenes photos to her Instagram page. One image revealed a photographer shooting the at-home selfie with a DSLR.

The video does not explicitly state that the photos were taken with the smartphone, but it is implied by the sequence of events and by the fact that the specific photo in question was used to promote a feature present in the smartphone. In the at-home selfie moment, the woman in the couple is hesitant to participate in the photo until she is done applying her makeup. The man takes it anyway, and the photo supposedly shows that the phone's AI-driven beauty feature digitally altered the image so she didn't have to finish applying real makeup to look like she was wearing it.