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Samsung caught using DSLR photo on Galaxy A8 Star landing page

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Enrique 03 December 2018

Samsung Android

By this point, it’s safe to say you can never assume that phone makers promote their phones using actual photos taken with the product that they are advertising. Is this false advertising? Only if a note explicitly says one thing and lies about it. Otherwise, is it up to interpretation?

This time, the photo in question is one that you can find on the Hong Kong version of Samsung’s Galaxy A8 Star landing page. Scroll down a bit and you'll see it, describing Live Focus and how the user can manually adjust the bokeh effect to as little or as much as they want. Only, this photo wasn’t actually shot with the darn thing.

Source:DIYPhotography.net shot by Dunja Djudjic

This is ironic because Samsung did the exact same thing with the Samsung Galaxy A8 earlier this year, in two tweets by Samsung Brazil. Apparently, posting a selfie to promote a smartphone that wasn’t taken with the actual phone and then watermarking “Samsung” in the photo isn’t false advertising in the eyes of Samsung. Those two tweets were eventually taken down.

The photographer, Dunja Djudjic, who shot the photo of herself, found out about this when she was notified that her photo was sold on Getty via EyeEm and immediately did a reverse photo search. Her initial reaction to using the photo “to fake their phone’s portrait mode”, was to “burst out into laughter”, not because of what Samsung did, but because of how photoshopped her face was.

Samsung's Live Focus reference Samsung's Live Focus reference
Samsung's Live Focus reference

At the very least, it seems that Samsung did legally purchase the rights to use the photo, but what does that mean for advertising materials and ads when the photo shown wasn’t taken by the smartphone advertised but is clearly implied? Nothing apparently, this is nothing new and we can expect smartphone companies to keep doing this.

Perhaps some places with stricter consumer protection laws will start to buckle down on this kind of implied advertising. For what it’s worth, Samsung isn’t the only offender - Huawei has been caught doing the same thing with the Huawei Nova 3i and responded with a statement justifying the practice in a promotional video by reiterating that “the product shots are for reference only”.

Galaxy A8 Star (HK) | Source

Related articles
  • Samsung Brazil caught passing stock photos as Galaxy A8 camera samples Samsung Brazil caught passing stock photos as Galaxy A8 camera samples
  • Huawei uses DSLR camera to capture 'selfie' featured in nova 3 video ad [Updated] Huawei uses DSLR camera to capture 'selfie' featured in nova 3 video ad [Updated]
  • Samsung has started assembling Galaxy M phones in India Samsung has started assembling Galaxy M phones in India
  • Move over Huawei, the Samsung Galaxy A8s is coming on December 10 Move over Huawei, the Samsung Galaxy A8s is coming on December 10

Reader comments

S
  • Shithead
  • Ss1
  • 06 Dec 2018

Why didn't Apple get mentioned in the article as an example? huh? They're been using false advertising for at least 5 years...Or you're bias toward Apple like always?

  • Reply
g
  • gam30toronto
  • RXg
  • 05 Dec 2018

mixedfished you are certainly mixed up in the head. Her picture's rights were bought by Samsung. It's just interesting that her picture using a DSLR was used by Samsung as a picture promoting their smartphone camera etc. Think before you criticize. T...

  • Reply
B
  • Blowntoaster
  • Naj
  • 05 Dec 2018

Manufacturers using DSLR's to take promotional photos has to do with the quality of the photo on large prints and screens. taking a photo with an Smartphone camera is never going to produce the quality or have the high pixel count companies need to d...

  • Reply
  • Read all comments
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Total reader comments: 89

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