Samsung Uses DSLR Photo To Promote A8 Star, Gets Caught

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It is proving to be a bad week for Samsung. A few days back, Samsung was caught promoting its product in a tweet sent from an iPhone. Now, someone caught Samsung cheating after the Korean firm tried passing a DSLR photo as one from its own smartphone, but got busted.

How Samsung got caught?

The culprit this time is Samsung Malaysia, which in an effort to promote the Galaxy A8 Star’s photo capabilities, used a DSLR photo and then edited it heavily to pass it off as one taken from the Galaxy A8 Star.

However, one Serbian photographer, Dunja Djudjic, caught Samsung cheating. She noticed that someone bought one of her photos from a service called EyeEm, which sells pictures to Getty Images. Djudjic then did some digging to find her edited image on Samsung’s Malaysian product page.

“My first reaction was to burst out into laughter. Just look at the Photoshop job they did on my face and hair! I’ve always liked my natural hair color (even though it’s turning gray black and white), but I guess the creator of this franken-image prefers reddish tone,” she said in her blog post titled SAMSUNG USED MY DSLR PHOTO TO FAKE THEIR PHONE’S “PORTRAIT MODE

The image in question is still being used on the Galaxy A8 Star page on Samsung’s Malaysian site with the words “Focus where needed.”

Samsung, on its part, was well prepared for a situation like this. That is why at the bottom of the page, it had a statement, “The contents within the screen are simulated images and are for demonstration purposes only.” It must be noted that Samsung later changed this disclaimer (as noticed by Android Police) to “The contents within the screen and images are simulated for illustrative purposes only.”

Samsung does not out-rightly say that the promoted image is taken from the Galaxy A8 Star. But, the fact that an image is used for its promotion implies that it was taken from an A8 Star camera.

Samsung cheating, not a new thing

It is not the first time someone has caught Samsung cheating for using a DSLR image to promote the capabilities of its smartphone. In August, Samsung Brazil was caught doing the same thing to promote the Galaxy A8 selfies. At the time, the company even added watermarks on the image to imply that it owned the pictures.

And, it is not just Samsung that has been caught cheating like this. Huawei also did a similar thing recently, but got caught after the female model in the commercial posted a behind-the-scenes picture of the ad showing the use of DSLR.

After getting caught, Huawei told INQ that the primary purpose of the ad was to show how to use certain features of the Huawei Nova 3 and Nova 3i. “As stated in the disclaimer at the end of the video, the product shots are for reference only,” the Chinese company said.

Use of stock images in advertising is not a new thing. However, use of such images for promoting camera capabilities is not less than a crime as it misleads viewers about the capability of a product.

Samsung, which is the biggest phone maker globally, should not resort to such practices. Some of its phones take very good photos, which the company can use to advertise. But, if the Galaxy A8 Star is not capable enough to produce high-quality pictures, then Samsung should not advertise those capabilities. Instead, it should advertise other features that make the Galaxy A8 Star unique.

Galaxy A8 Star – specifications

The Samsung Galaxy A8 Star is not a high-end phone, but it does boast some exciting features, like an intelligent dual camera system, large battery and tall Infinity Display. The A8 Star can be viewed as a successor to the Galaxy A8+.

The Samsung Galaxy A8 Star features a 6.3-inch FHD Super AMOLED Infinity Display. It is powered by the 2GHz octa-core Snapdragon 660 chipset. Talking of memory, it comes with 6GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage (expandable up to 400GB via a microSD card).

It features a dual camera setup – a 16-megapixel primary sensor and 24-megapixel secondary sensor. Both get f/1.7 aperture. The front camera has a 24-megapixel sensor with f/2.0 aperture. Samsung has given it a 3,700mAh battery with USB Type-C support.

The device runs on Android 8.0 Oreo with Samsung UI skin on top. Its dimensions are 162.4×77.0x7.6mm, while it weighs 191 grams.

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