Huawei got caught passing off this professional image as a photo taken with its new flagship phone

David Becker/Getty Images

A Huawei customer.

• Huawei tried to pass off a professional photo as an image taken with its new flagship phone, the P30, which will launch later this month.
• Images uploaded to Huawei's Weibo account seemed to show the P30's camera in action, but they were actually stock photos taken with a DSLR.
• Although Huawei did not explicitly say the images were taken with the P30 camera, it has since added a disclaimer.
• This is not the first time Huawei has been caught passing off pro-pics as mobile images.

Huawei got caught passing off a professional image as a photo taken with its new flagship phone.

Huawei's phones are known for their cameras, and a Huawei exec ramped up the hype for its upcoming flagship smartphone, the P30, earlier this month by confirming the phone will possess a "super-zoom" periscope camera.

However, a series of photos uploaded to Huawei's Weibo account, showcasing the phone's zooming capabilities, appear to have been taken from other sources, as spotted by GSMArena.

One shot of an erupting volcano was from Getty Images, and taken on a DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) camera.

Huawei/Weibo/Tom Pfeiffer/VolcanoDiscovery/Getty

Huawei's promotional image (left) next to the original image.

The Verge reports that once the images' origins were revealed online, Huawei added disclaimers.

This isn't the first time Huawei has been caught passing off photographs taken on a camera as taken on a phone.

In 2018, a behind-the-scenes photo from a Huawei Nova 3 ad revealed it had been shot on a DSLR camera. In July 2016, it was revealed that a promotional image purportedly taken on a Huawei P9 was taken on a camera worth $4,500.

Huawei did not immediately reply to Business Insider for comment. The P30 is due to be unveiled in Paris on March 26.

The stories of "fake" photos come at a delicate time for the Chinese company, which is trying to convince Western countries that it is not used as a backdoor for spying by Xi Jinping's regime.