Self-testing properties of Gisin's elegant Bell inequality

An experiment in which the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt inequality is maximally violated is self-testing (i.e., it certifies in a device-independent way both the state and the measurements). We prove that an experiment maximally violating Gisin's elegant Bell inequality is not similarly self-testing. The reason can be traced back to the problem of distinguishing an operator from its complex conjugate. We provide a complete and explicit characterization of all scenarios in which the elegant Bell inequality is maximally violated. This enables us to see exactly how the problem plays out.