Huawei implied a P9 phone shot this pic, but it actually was a $4,500 Canon combo
The Chinese electronics giant posted the image on its Google+ page but has since taken it down.
When CNET's Andrew Hoyle reviewed Huawei's P9 smartphone, he found the camera to be quite spectacular. But now Huawei has come under fire for implying that the camera is better than it actually is.
The Chinese electronics giant uploaded the picture above to its Google+ page, writing alongside it in a now deleted post:
"We managed to catch a beautiful sunrise with Deliciously Ella. The #HuaweiP9's dual Leica cameras makes taking photos in low light conditions like this a pleasure. Reinvent smartphone photography and share your sunrise pictures with us. #OO"
And then a shadow was cast.
The Huawei sunrise photo in question. Take a closer look for yourself.
It turns out that Google's social media platform makes EXIF metadata available for all pictures posted on it. That data, unearthed over the weekend by Android Police, stated the picture was actually taken by a $2,600 Canon EOS 5D Mark III DSLR, paired with a $1,900 lens.
"It has recently been highlighted that an image posted to our social channels was not shot on the Huawei P9," Huawei said Monday in a statement.
"The photo, which was professionally taken while filming a Huawei P9 advert, was shared to inspire our community," Huawei continued. "We recognise though that we should have been clearer with the captions for this image. It was never our intention to mislead. We apologise for this and we have removed the image."
The need to upsell the P9's camera, which has stamp of approval by from renowned German photography company Leica, isn't clear. However, Huawei isn't alone in questionably marketing a smartphone's photographic abilities.
In 2012, Nokia released a promotional video showing off the image stabilisation technology of its then-flagship Lumia 920 -- only to be found to have used a proper video camera to shoot footage ostensibly captured by the 920.