So this week gave us a pretty perfect little case study in why you shouldn't trust a product demo video, and I've been chuckling about it since Wednesday night.
Nokia held an event in New York on the 5th to show off the new Lumia 920 and Lumia 820, both running Windows Phone 8, both loaded up with this new PureView camera tech Nokia's been hyping for months. The headline feature they wanted everyone talking about was the optical image stabilization — basically, the idea that you could shoot smooth, un-shaky video while riding a bike over cobblestones, because the camera module physically floats and compensates for movement. Neat trick if it's real. And Nokia even had a promo video to prove it: a woman riding a bike through a plaza, filming herself with the phone on a selfie stick, footage buttery smooth the whole way.
Except it wasn't the phone. Somebody noticed a reflection in a shop window partway through the clip, and in that reflection you can pretty clearly see a van with a big rig mounted camera, the kind you'd use for actual professional video work, following alongside her. Not a Lumia. Not even close. Nokia fessed up pretty fast once people started pointing it out, saying the ad was meant to be "illustrative" of what the stabilization could theoretically do rather than actual phone footage, which is a very generous way of describing a video that shows a woman holding a phone up to her face while a completely different camera does the actual filming.
I don't think this makes the Lumia 920's camera bad, to be clear. For all I know the real stabilization is genuinely impressive. But it's such an unforced error. You had one job in that video, which was to show the thing the phone actually does, and instead somebody in a marketing department decided the truth wasn't smooth enough and swapped in a real camera rig. And of course now that's the story instead of the phone. I saw more headlines this week about the reflection in the window than about the hardware specs, which, if you're Nokia, has to sting a little given how much they need this launch to go well against everything Samsung and Apple are throwing at the market right now.
It's not even the first time I've caught myself side-eyeing a product video this year. Every company does the low-light demo where the room is suspiciously well lit, or the "just look how fast it boots" clip where you can tell there's a cut two seconds before the home screen actually loads. I get that it's marketing and marketing exaggerates, that's not exactly breaking news. But there's a difference between flattering angles and literally showing footage from equipment that isn't the product. At some point you're not selling the phone anymore, you're selling a lie about the phone, and eventually somebody's going to zoom in on a window reflection and catch you.
Same week, Motorola had their own event, also in New York, pushing out the Droid RAZR HD and RAZR MAXX HD for Verizon — bigger 4.7 inch HD screens, that Kevlar fiber back they like to talk about, the MAXX version with a battery that's supposed to get you through two full days. I haven't gotten hands on time with either yet so I won't pretend to have an opinion on how they actually perform, but it's funny how compressed this all is. Three or four major phone launches crammed into a single week in early September, right as everyone's also refreshing Apple's site every hour waiting on that invite that went out a few days back for the 12th. You know the one, "It's almost here," with the shadow of a number 5 in the graphic if you squint. Subtle, guys.
Anyway. If you're the type who watches these press event livestreams (I am, unfortunately, it's basically appointment television for nerds at this point), keep an eye out for the little tells. Reflections in windows. Cuts that happen a little too conveniently. The demo that never quite shows you the whole unbroken take. Companies have gotten very good at making things look effortless, and every so often you get a reminder that "looks effortless" and "is real" are two very different claims.
I'll be curious to see if Nokia says anything more about it once the initial embarrassment wears off, or if this just quietly disappears the way these things usually do once the next big keynote steals the news cycle.