Huawei Ascend P7 Disqualified by FutureMark for Cheating 3DMark Benchmark Tests
Huawei Ascend P7 was disqualified by popular benchmarking software called 3DMark from FutureMark. The handset was released last June 2014 and has impressive specs that was also found to be cheating GFXBench T-Rex benchmark tests.
PhoneArena has revealed that smartphone manufacturers always want their handsets to score high on benchmark tests. To achieve it, they add a code into their device that can automatically sprint into action when a benchmark test from a popular benchmarking app is carried out on the device.
When the device realizes that a benchmark test is being conducted, it throttles up all the cores of the processor until the test finishes. Usually, the test is conducted to find out the CPU prowess. PhoneArena added that an easy way to prevent a device from cheating the benchmarking app is to rename the app. By doing this, the code added by the smartphone manufacturer will not be able to detect the benchmarking app.
Huawei Ascend P7 dual SIM was found to cheat the 3DMark benchmark tests. The handset is powered by Huawei's own processor called the HiSilicon Kirin 910T processor. It is a quad-core Cortex A9 processor that offers of a performance of 1.8GHz. It is coupled with Mali-450MP4 graphics.
The processor that lies under the hood of Ascend P7 is not a very powerful processor, but it was found to be scoring an impressive scores on 3DMark and T-Rex. Anandtech highlighted that the manufacturers may have added a code into the device because of which the handset was able to score high.
To detect the cheat, AnandTech carried out benchmark tests using two apps and then did the tests once again after renaming them. There was a noticeable difference in the scores.
The GFXBench T-Rex test on Ascend P7 score 12.3 when it was conducted from Play Store. When it s renamed by another name that is different from the name listed with Play Store, the score came down to 10.6.
When the 3DMark Ice Storm test was conducted with the stock name, it scored 7,462 points. After renaming the app and conducting the test again, the score went down to 5,816.
Since the Huawei Ascend P7 was found to be cheating, it was removed along with its results from Futuremark's listings. In the past, even biggies like Samsung for Galaxy Note 10.1 and HTC for One M8 were found cheating benchmark tests.