Ryan Haines / Android Authority
TL;DR
- A Nothing Phone 3 retail demo has been spotted making misleading claims about photo samples.
- Android Authority has spoken to two of the photographers who shot the pics, who confirm they did not use the Phone 3 at all.
- Asked for comment, Nothing has not denied these claims, and instead says that it plans to update demo units.
Phone manufacturers, it’s time to wise up! You are selling to a market full of some exceptionally clever, resourceful tech fans, and if you try to get one past them, you’re going to get caught. Companies still sometimes push their luck juicing benchmark performance, or maybe they take a chance at faking camera samples. Over the years we’ve seen everything from Nokia faking video stabilization on the Lumia 920 to Samsung’s “detail enhanced” moon pictures, and now it’s time for Nothing and the Phone 3 to take the hot seat over accusations of misleading camera samples.
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This all starts with a screen recording, purportedly captured from a Nothing Phone 3 retail demo unit on display in New Zealand. Shoppers browsing the interface might come across one screen showing off a selection of five pictures, supposedly taken with the Phone 3’s camera:
Between the #WithNothing hashtag and that statement, “Here’s what our community has captured with the Phone (3),” it’s impossible to read this as anything other than asserting that these are images taken by the smartphone’s own camera hardware.
As it turns out, however, that’s just simply not true.
One of the photographers behind these images reached out anonymously to Android Authority, advising us that all five of these images are available for license on the stock photo marketplace Stills: the window, the glass, the headlight, the staircase, and the woman.
We asked those photographers about their experience here — could some of these shots really originate from a Phone 3? — and heard back from Roman Fox, the photographer who took the car headlight image Nothing used.
Rather than a Phone 3, Fox confirms that he shot the headlight pic using a Fujifilm XH2s, instead. In fact, he took the picture in Paris all the way back in 2023, long before the Phone 3 was even a glimmer in Nothing’s eye — you can even see it shared on Fox’s Instagram in a post from last summer.
The photographers we spoke to confirm that Nothing did pay them for their photos through the Stills platform, so while the company’s usage was licensed, it presents their work in a way that’s almost guaranteed to mislead shoppers.
With this much of the picture clear, we contacted Nothing to see if the company had any response to the seemingly damning allegations. The statement Nothing provided does not attempt to deny what we found, and is solely focused on next steps. A company spokesperson tells us:
Accuracy in how we represent our product capabilities is important to us. Phone (3) demo units are being updated to feature only images captured with Phone (3).
That’s less than completely satisfying, and we’re left with as many questions as answers. Has Nothing done anything like this before — and gotten away with it? How isolated of an incident was this?
What makes this all the more frustrating is that modern smartphone cameras are pretty damn impressive in their own right, and if Nothing just got the Phone 3 into the hands of the same sort of talented photographers as the group who took these pics here, they probably would have produced some dazzling results. We certainly found a lot to like about the Phone 3’s camera capabilities in our review. So why risk so much goodwill with shoppers by doing something like this?
We hope this is the last time we have to call a phone manufacturer out on faking camera samples, but given the decade-plus track record the industry has provided, we’re not holding our breath.
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