Samsung Fudging Benchmarks Again On Galaxy Note 3

Posted by timothy on Tuesday October 1, 2013 @05:28AM from the selective-activation-sounds-nicer dept.

tlhIngan writes "A few months ago, Samsung was caught gaming benchmarks on the Galaxy S4 (International version). They would lock the GPU at a higher-than-normal frequency when certain applications were run, including many popular Android benchmarking programs. These had the expected result of boosting the performance numbers. This time, the Galaxy Note 3 was caught doing the same thing, boosting CPU scores by 20% over the otherwise identical LG G2 (which uses the same SoC at the same clock). Samsung defends these claims by saying the other apps make use of such functionality, but Ars reversed-engineered the relevant code and discovered it applied only to benchmark applications. Even more damning was that the Note 3 was still faster than the G2 when run using 'stealth' (basically renamed) versions of the benchmarking apps which did not get the boost."

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Should have done a battery benchmark by jandrese · 2013-10-01 05:39 · Score: 4, Interesting

They should have opened up a benchmarking app on both phones (the G2 and the Note3) and then did a battery life test on both phones with them "idle".

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Does not computer by squiggleslash · 2013-10-01 05:41 · Score: 4, Interesting

Even more damning was that the Note 3 was still faster than the G2 when run using 'stealth' (basically renamed) versions of the benchmarking apps which did not get the boost."

Not sure how this is "damning". I'd have thought it would prove the principle that the optimizations aren't app specific.
What am I missing?

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