8 marketing tricks phone brands should stop using right now - Android

Smartphone marketing can be a devious endeavor, as various brands seek to gain the most attention from the average consumer. And oftentimes we see mobile manufacturers take a “by any means necessary” approach to marketing and advertising.

But what types of questionable moves are phone brands engaged in? And how can you spot them? We look at some of the most prominent marketing tricks in the smartphone industry.

1. Photo fakery

One of the more common smartphone marketing tricks has been to use photos taken with a DSLR camera while pretending that it was taken with a phone. Huawei has used this tactic several times in the past, such as with the Huawei P9 back in 2016 and a Nova series device in 2018. The latter only emerged after a model in the photoshoot posted an Instagram snap (seen above), revealing that they weren’t actually taking a selfie and that a DSLR camera took a photo of them.

Samsung hasn’t been immune to this practice, as its Brazilian division also posted stock photo shots and pretended they came from the Galaxy A8. Some of these cases can be down to negligence rather than malicious intent, but it’s still incredibly misleading and disappointing when today’s smartphone cameras are so good.

This also makes you wonder how often manufacturers engage in this behavior — the ones we listed above are just some of the times companies have been caught.

2. Benchmark cheating

Synthetic benchmarks don’t quite represent real-world performance, but they can generally give us a rough idea of what to expect. Unfortunately, benchmark cheating has become another smartphone marketing tactic, with some brands guilty of it today. This practice happens so brands can make their phones look better than they actually are.

Editor's Pick

MediaTek accused of cheating in benchmarks, accuses ‘key competitor’ too

We've seen several smartphone brands cheat benchmarks over the years, ostensibly in a bid to earn some ill-deserved praise among enthusiasts. But a new report suggests chipset manufacturer MediaTek could be gaming these scores. Anandtech uncovered …

Smartphone manufacturers (and even chipset providers) are able to detect when a benchmark app is launched and then enter a performance-boosting mode. A so-called “sports” or performance-boosting mode ignores battery life in order to deliver a great benchmark score. But the truth is that this power-boosting, battery-sapping mode doesn’t accurately reflect the phone’s real-world performance compared to simply running with default settings.

Some of the more prominent companies implicated in benchmark cheating or outright caught over the years include MediaTek, Huawei, Honor, Oppo, Xiaomi, and HTC. We even covered the biggest offenders of 2018 over here.

3. Misleading images compared to reality

Another disappointing smartphone marketing tactic is the practice of showing off phone renders/sketches/pictures that actually look better than reality. Be it thinner bezels, a smaller notch, or a tinier camera bump, several brands have shown renders that mislead people.

One of the more prominent cases involved Lenovo’s Z5 smartphone, when a company executive showed off a bezel-free phone design (seen above). Well, it turns out that the real-world device actually had a gigantic iPhone-style notch. Another prominent case saw Huawei shave the side bezels off the P8 in 2015, while the real-world model had bigger borders.

Less prominent manufacturers like Bluboo and Umidigi have also engaged in this sketchy behavior, making their phones look thinner or showing slimmer bezels in renders.

4. Flash sales and sold out claims

OnePlus was arguably the first brand to hop aboard the flash sale bandwagon, creating demand by simply holding flash sales for the OnePlus One. That is, they only sell a limited number of devices for a given period before you can’t buy the phone anymore (well, until the next flash sale).

Read: Xiaomi and Realme — A tale of pot and kettle

While there is some merit to offering a flash sale in order to balance supply and demand, many companies have taken to using it as a promotional tactic. The likely thinking is that by promoting it as a scarce product, more people will want it. Xiaomi and Realme are two big proponents of flash sales in recent times.

Another one of the more notable smartphone marketing tricks by brands is to tout how much money they made on the first day of sales or across a given flash sale. For example, a brand might proudly say that they sold $1 million worth of a given model on one day. But if the model in question costs $1,000, that means you only sold 1,000 devices, right? Hardly a big deal in markets like China, India, and the US.

5. Misleading spec claims