In today’s fiercely-competitive smartphone market, hype is everything. This is why manufacturers are willing to do whatever it takes to make their offerings appear superior to the competition, even if it means taking someone else’s product and claiming it to be their own.
Just a few weeks back, Huawei made a fool of itself trying to pass off DSLR shots as those from its Nova 3 smartphone. Now, it’s Xiaomi that has been caught doing something similar.
Recently, Donovan Sung, Xiaomi Global’s spokesperson shared a camera photo on his Instagram, claiming it to have been captured from the Poco F1, the first smartphone launched under Xiaomi’s newest spinoff brand.
However, some Reddit users were quick to see that something was amiss, as Sung had used the exact image to promote Xiaomi’s Mi MIX 2s smartphone last year. What gave it away was the poorly-photoshopped ‘Shot on Mi MIX 2s, AI Dual Camera’ watermark at the bottom left corner of the image.
Watch: Xiaomi Mi A2 First Look
It’s true that Xiaomi used only its own smartphone’s camera photo and not a DSLR’s, but it really doesn’t make things any better.
Unsurprisingly, the image has since been deleted from Sung’s Instagram profile.
Speaking of the smartphone in question, Xiaomi launched Poco F1 in India last month. It may not have a great camera, but the F1 is an immensely value-for-money smartphone as far as the specs are concerned. Having a starting price of just Rs 20,999, it comes with Qualcomm’s top-of-the-line Snapdragon 845 SoC, paired with (at least) 6GB of RAM. This makes Xiaomi Poco F1 the cheapest smartphone to be powered by Qualcomm’s (current) flagship chipset.