Just a placeholder? Inside the Nothing Phone 3 fake photo controversy

When a screen recording surfaced from a Nothing Phone 3 demo unit in a New Zealand store, it looked pretty standard at first glance. Five impressive photos displayed under the banner “Here’s what our community has captured with the Phone (3)” alongside the #WithNothing hashtag. Shoppers would naturally assume these shots showcased the phone’s camera prowess. They’d be wrong.

Android Authority broke the story, which ignited a massive wave of backlash and left Nothing scrambling to explain. Those supposedly user-generated photos? All five were professional stock images licensed from the marketplace Stills. The window shot, the glass with sparkling liquid, the car headlight, the spiral staircase, and the portrait of a woman – all available for purchase, none taken with a Phone 3.

The smoking gun came when one of the actual photographers reached out to Android Authority, confirming what investigative work had already revealed. Roman Fox, who shot the car headlight image, confirmed that he captured that photo using a Fujifilm XH2s in Paris back in 2023, long before the Phone 3 existed. You can even find it on his Instagram from last summer, timestamped and geotagged.

Shortly after hundreds of tech enthusiasts started calling out Nothing on X, the company’s co-founder, Akis Evangelidis, posted a lengthy explanation. His version painted it as an innocent mistake – demo units need placeholder content months before launch, and somehow the stock photos never got replaced with real Phone 3 samples. “This was an unfortunate oversight, and I want to emphasise that there was no ill intent,” he wrote, before inviting the community to share their actual Phone 3 photos.

Meanwhile, Carl Pei’s response was notably muted. Rather than his usual X presence, he simply retweeted Evangelidis’ explanation without adding commentary under MKBHD’s post highlighting the news.

The community wasn’t entirely buying the innocent mistake narrative, and for good reason. This isn’t Nothing’s first marketing controversy. The company previously faced criticism over the #DearNothing campaign, which sparked controversy after it was alleged that the company had not sent review units to some creators in South India.

More recently, the company was caught lying about its claims of PWM dimming. MKBHD’s testing revealed that it only had a 960 Hz PWM dimming in low light, compared to what Nothing made us believe that the device supports 2160 Hz PWM dimming. Following that, the company issued a statement to claiming that they intentionally changed the PWM dimming for better display quality.

That said, Nothing isn’t the first smartphone maker to get caught in this particular trap. Samsung faced scrutiny multiple times, including their infamous moon photography controversy where the phone artificially enhanced lunar shots with pre-loaded textures. Nokia took heat for faking video stabilization demonstrations with the Lumia 920. Huawei got busted using DSLR photos to showcase their camera capabilities. The pattern is so common you’d think companies would have learned by now.

For a company holding less than 1% of the global smartphone market despite nearly 150% year-over-year growth, credibility hits like this can be particularly damaging. When your entire brand revolves around being different from the corporate giants, getting caught doing exactly what those giants do isn’t just embarrassing – it’s potentially existential.

That said, since this blunder wasn’t really part of a big marketing push, I doubt it will impact Nothing’s credibility in any major way. After all, it was just a few pictures on a handful of demo units. Nevertheless, responding to the suggestions, Akis indicated that the company will use placeholder images shot on older Nothing smartphones once again on demo units.

But there’s still a lesson for companies to learn. Stop thinking that you can get away with fake marketing already!