Apple vs Samsung: Samsung Fakes Benchmark Results, Android Licensees Too; Schiller Tweets “Shenanigans”
On Oct 1, Philip Schiller, Apple senior vice president for Worldwide Marketing, aroused curiosity from his Twitter followers with the following puzzling post:
shenanigans http://t.co/30FoQDfNw0
— Philip Schiller (@pschiller) October 1, 2013
The link posted by Schiller was an article from Ron Amadeo of Ars Technical. The article revealed that after testing the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, they had found out that Samsung is cheating (yet again) with its benchmark results.
"We noticed an odd thing while testing the Samsung Galaxy Note 3: it scores really, really well in benchmark tests-puzzlingly well, in fact... After a good bit of sleuthing, we can confidently say that Samsung appears to be artificially boosting the US Note 3's benchmark scores with a special, high-power CPU mode that kicks in when the device runs a large number of popular benchmarking apps. Samsung did something similar with the international Galaxy S 4's GPU, but this is the first time we've seen the boost on a US device. We also found a way to disable this special CPU mode, so for the first time we can see just how much Samsung's benchmark optimizations affect benchmark scores."
The article by Amadeo on Ars technical went detailing how Samsung made the cheating possible, supported by graphs and technical extraction files.
Meanwhile, a report from AppleInsider stated that cheating benchmark results is not an isolated case for Samsung. Fake benchmark boosting was also rampant among Asus, HTC, LG and Android licensees.
"With the exception of Apple and Motorola, literally every single OEM we've worked with ships (or has shipped) at least one device that similarly fudges benchmarks," Anand Lal Shimpi and Brian Klug of AnandTec reported.
"Virtually all Android vendors appear to keep their own lists of applications that matter and need optimizing. The lists grow/change over time, and they don't all overlap. With these types of situations it's almost impossible to get any one vendor to be the first to stop. The only hope resides in those who don't partake today, and of course with the rest of the ecosystem," AnandTec stated.
The only exemption among the Android licensees are Google, Motorola subsidiary and Nexus brand. Google set the example of how to "deliver clean, updated products and take advantage of features in the latest OS."
Sadly, other Android licensees failed to follow suit Google's good example. In fact, manufacturers for Android in China and Korea had also reportedly faked benchmarks results and have opted to provide consumers with cheap products boosted by cheat specs and supported by "layers of junkware, ads and subscription plans, AnandTec emphasised.