Did Huawei highlight the P30’s camera using stock photos?

This volcano image posted on Huawei's official Weibo account has been revealed to be a stock photo taken way back in 2009. — Huawei

On March 8, Huawei posted photos on the company’s official Weibo account to promote the camera on its upcoming flagship, the P30, which is rumoured to feature a periscope-style lens with 5x zoom.

The post includes a caption written in Chinese which, according to Google Translate, stands for “The distance will not hinder our exploration; the beauty is always the best feedback for the spirit of adventure, #P30#, see you on March 26th in Paris, France!”

You would think the photos were shot with the P30 but they are not. According to GSM Arena, which was tipped off by its readers, the image with a volcano is a stock photo from Getty Images taken in 2009 while the one with a child and ducks was taken by photographer Jack Olson in 2015 with a DSLR.



When reached for comment, Huawei Malaysia had this to say: ““We’ve been made aware that there might have been some misunderstanding regarding our recent Huawei P30 Series teaser posters. We would like reiterate that those are, in fact, only teaser posters, and are only intended to hint at the unique new features that will come with the Huawei P30 Series. Huawei has acquired the licenses to the original images and the posters are artistic renditions of said features only.”

The images now feature a disclaimer – “Image solely for advertising” – but it was only added after the photos caught the attention of the Internet.

Having compared the “fake” Huawei P30 sample shots grabbed by GSMAreana with the ones in Richard Yu’s weibo post, it’s safe to say that Huawei updated the pics with a disclaimer after being called out. This wouldn’t have been an issue if this was done in the first place. pic.twitter.com/8RmRPFWcIO