Nowadays, tech reviewers are playing a key role in the marketing of a new gadget. Don’t get me wrong, the product reviewing mechanism exists long before the boom of social medias – but the current weightage they are carrying is monumental compared to the pre-smartphone era.
However, what would be direction of the moral compass then? How can someone ensure the zero bias policy if the reviewer already has a vested interest in the product? Unfortunately there is no adequate resolution of this controversy.
On the other hand, there is this never-ending battle between the leaksters versus the makers. Yes, sometimes the companies do drop things out of the blue, but generally they are trying to defend their upcoming products from the preying leakers – by any means necessary!
Wait a minute – what if the leaker actually does not have the information that they are claiming? What if a spotlight hunter kid is wreaking havoc, just to seek some attention?
Well, that’s not a far fetched dream. Rewind the time a few days, and you should stumble on an ‘alleged’ unboxing video of Realme 4.
The video was taken down after a while, but it managed to attract a significant amount of crowd. Many publications decided to write articles on the basis of the ‘leak’ from the YouTuber Agrawalji Technical, who did not show anything concrete regarding the purported unboxing.
Wait, there’s more! The same guy came up with another hands on video of Poco F2 – the existence of which has yet to be confirmed. Not only the exterior looks flimsy in the video, even the icons are far from being similar to the typical MIUI icons.
Personally, I’m not an admirer of MIUI. But that does not mean Xiaomi/Poco will abruptly switch to OPPO’s Color OS in the next iteration of Pocophone! Well, anything is possible if you trust this guy.
The finest twist in the saga came yesterday, when the YouTuber shared another unboxing video of the alleged Xiaomi CC9. Sure, pick the most searched topic, slap a skin on a random phone and post the worst-possible bootleg video.
Fortunately, Pocophone’s Alvin Tse outrightly debunked the authenticity of the video. However, nothing can stop tech publications to fall in the trap of these misleading info.
At the end of the day, it’s all about the controlling the emotions. Do you want to know about upcoming phones? Follow verified leakers. Spotted something interesting? Do cross-reference it with existing set of info. Don’t be a pawn in the clickbait ad revenue generation scheme.
Members of Team PiunikaWeb always try to cite the original source while reporting, thus we think it necessary to talk about the recent shenanigans. Rest assured, our readers will get proper updates about these phones in time.
PiunikaWeb is a unique initiative that mainly focuses on investigative journalism. This means we do a lot of hard work to come up with news stories that are either ‘exclusive,’ ‘breaking,’ or ‘curated’ in nature. Perhaps that’s the reason our work has been picked by the likes of Forbes, Foxnews, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, Macrumors, and more. Do take a tour of our website to get a feel of our work. And if you like what we do, stay connected with us on Twitter (@PiunikaWeb) and other social media channels to receive timely updates on stories we publish.
Kingshuk De
896 Posts
I came from a mixed background of Statistics and Computer Science. My research domains included embedded computer systems, mobile computing and delay tolerant networks in post-disaster scenarios. Apart from tinkering with gadgets or building hackintosh, I like to hop on various subreddits and forums like MyDigitalLife and XDA.
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