Huawei received the wrong kind of attention for a Nova 3 advertising campaign, after it was revealed shots supposedly taken with the smartphone were actually captured using a digital SLR (DSLR) camera.

The ad is designed to promote the phone camera’s beautification feature. But the actress involved published several “behind the scenes” shots on Instagram, which showed a man with his hand extended to a selfie position but holding nothing, with a fully-fledged digital camera in a position designed to replicate where the phone would be.

Android Police said the vendor had previously been caught using a DSLR to produce “camera samples” attributed to its P9 smartphone, and accused of editing bezel sizes in marketing shots.

Other vendors have also been caught out: for example, in 2012 Nokia was caught faking a Lumia 920 promotion when a reflection showed a professional camera crew.

As the name suggests, Nova 3 is the third incarnation of Huawei’s mid-tier Nova line. The vendor described it as a “quad-camera powerhouse that breaks ground for a new world of [artificial intelligence] AI photography”, including a beautification algorithm which “take into consideration how people around the world perceive beauty, and apply a different set of adjustments to people of different sex and skin colour”.