It is a real shame when even the biggest fishes in the pond get caught doing something dishonest. Sony Ericsson is one of the biggest handset producers out there, which makes it shocking to see that it has tried to deceive its potential customers.

The company has posted on its German website some images which are supposed to have been taken with their Sony Ericsson K850i mobile phone. The pictures are beautiful and reveal a camera quality well above what other handsets have gotten us used to seeing until now. It looks almost too good to be truly made with a cellular and not a digital camera. Unfortunately, it is.

After saving the image and looking up in its EXIF data, it becomes clear that it has not been taken with a K850i device, but with a Sanyo S50 digital camera. The other three images have incomplete specifications, which leaves a question mark posing on their true origin. EXIF data is incredibly easy to modify, which shows the fact that Sony Ericsson has made a minor slip with this one. Still, consequences can be major, as the company has moved on shaky grounds.

Who likes producers that lie about their products only to sell them? The most shocking aspect of this matter is that it comes from the fourth handset producer, according to world sales. Sony Ericsson might have to face great trust issues if the situation gets out of proportions. Until then, they might have enough time to check and modify the EXIF files of all the other images on their website, until someone does it ahead of them.

Sony Ericsson K850i is one of the most evolved phone models in the company's Cybershot line and also one of the few cellulars out there that come equipped with a 5 megapixel camera. At this performance, the device is surely capable of taking high quality pictures, very close to the digital camera level. Too bad that Sony Ericsson liked Sanyo digital cameras better than its own device.