Huawei denied its phones automatically delete pictures saved from Twitter

A number of users were complaining about the strange behavior with the Twitter app on Huawei phones. The Twitter app was seemingly deleting pictures immediately after the user saved them to the phone using the app.

After saving the image, users could see a message from “Huawei System Services” that said, “Twitter has deleted a photo from Gallery”. You can see a live example here.

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In a statement, Huawei attributed the issue to a quirk with two specific builds of the Twitter app, along with the image-protection system that’s built into its Huawei EMUI software.

Here’s the company’s statement in full:

“Huawei has recently received user reports that alleges the Twitter app automatically deletes images on Huawei devices.”

“Having investigated the issue, Huawei has discovered that whenever users of certain devices download an image using specific builds of the Twitter app (version 7.78.0 and 7.77.0), the app will automatically create a folder of the same name as the image and promptly delete it in the background. This action triggers Huawei’s built-in image protection alert, causing the system to notify the user of the deletion. However, the images are not affected. Users may find their images at the following location: File Manager/picture/Twitter.”

“Huawei is currently in conversation with Twitter to resolve this issue as soon as possible. Huawei remains committed to delivering the best user experiences.”

It means, No pictures were permanently deleted; they were just moved to a separate location on the phone’s file system. This inadvertently caused a feature in EMUI to show a notification, which made users panic and think the worst.

If you are using #Huawei in China, you will not allowed to download images via Twitter app. I have received many reports among the Chinese Twitter users. This comes from system level of Chinese Huawei ROM, and it's trying to slander Twitter app itself! pic.twitter.com/leNm6je9E3

— 祈翠的哈哟 #香港必胜 (@uriimaho) January 18, 2019