Nothing launched the Phone 3 last month with specs like a Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 processor and a 6.67-inch AMOLED display. The company heavily promoted its new camera system, which has a triple camera array with a 50MP main lens, a 50MP periscope lens, and a 50MP ultra-wide camera on the rear and a 50MP front-facing camera.
The company was recently caught using stock photos on an in-store demo unit in Oceania. According to an anonymous tip sent to Android Police, the demo app on the Phone 3 displayed five pictures, which included shots of a spiral staircase, a car headlight, a glass, a window, and a woman looking towards the camera.
A card on the screen read, "Judge for yourself. Here"s what our community has captured with the Phone (3)." The problem is that all five images are available for license on the Stills stock photo marketplace.
The Verge reports that it contacted the photographer who took the photo of the woman looking at the camera, and the photographer said that Nothing had purchased the image license. That photographer is Abdullahi Santuraki, a visual artist based in Nigeria.
The outlet says it was able to confirm the photo"s origins by looking at the EXIF file, which showed the picture was taken in 2023, long before the Phone 3 existed.
The photo of the car headlight was taken by Roman Fox in 2023 using a Fujifilm XH2s camera. Android Authority was able to confirm this with Fox.
In response to the backlash from fans, Akis Evangelidis, co-founder of Nothing, published a statement on X, apologizing for what he called an "unfortunate oversight". He explained that an initial version of the demo software needed to be submitted with placeholder images four months before the phone"s launch.
Evangelidis stated that these placeholders are meant to be replaced with real photo samples once mass production begins, but some units were not updated. The company is "investigating internally to make sure such an issue doesn"t happen again".
Companies using professional photos to promote a smartphone camera without disclosing it is nothing new, of course. We saw this in 2018, with the Huawei Nova 3 and the Samsung Galaxy A8. For the Huawei Nova 3, one of the actors from the ad campaign posted a behind-the-scenes photo showing a photographer with a DSLR camera taking the "selfie." The male actor in the ad was not even holding a phone.
While this damages trust in the company, the Nothing Phone 3 has some interesting features going for it, like its unique Glyph Matrix design, stereo speakers, in-display fingerprint sensor, IP68 rating for water/dust resistance, and Nothing OS 3.5 based on Android 15, which is promised to receive 5 years of Android updates and 7 years of security patches. If this sounds good to you, you can grab one off Amazon at 10% off (US only).