Samsung Fudging Benchmarks Again On Galaxy Note 3

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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."

168 of 258 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

If this was Apple... by thestudio_bob · 2013-10-01 05:30 · Score: 2, Insightful

If Apple did this, people would be up in arms!

--
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains /.
1. Re:If this was Apple... by Bill_the_Engineer · 2013-10-01 05:34 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Are you implying that us android users wouldn't be "up in arms"? It affects us more. While apple sells two models of the iPhone, we have a multitude of android phones to choose from. Samsung messing with the benchmark has the potential to cause a customer to chose samsung over HTC, Google Nexus, or Motorola phone.
  
  --
  These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
2. Re:If this was Apple... by mveloso · 2013-10-01 05:35 · Score: 1
  
  You'd think they'd stop doing this, since they keep getting caught. However, crime pays. They've made substantially more money off of their phones than the puny fine they had to pay in the Samsung vs Apple trial. They doing it again to Dyson vacuums.
  The market is rewarding their bad behavior, and they're going to just keep going.
  Samsung's integrity is closely tied to the size of their profits. Once the lack of integrity starts impacting their bottom line, they'll find some. Until then, it's business as usual.
3. Re:If this was Apple... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-01 05:38 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Why would you even consider synthetic benchmarks when choosing a phone? Planning on trying some bitcoin mining on the go?
4. Re:If this was Apple... by dgatwood · 2013-10-01 05:46 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Samsung are still very much the good guys, and their hardware is still clearly the best.
  You've obviously never used their Blu-Ray players.
  
  --
  Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
5. Re:If this was Apple... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-01 05:46 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  If Apple did this, people would be up in arms!
  Both Apple and Android use ARM CPUs.
  Now, if it had been happening on the Surface tablets (non-RT, of course) people would be up in Atoms.
6. Re:If this was Apple... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-01 05:47 · Score: 1
  
  In other words, you're already biased in Samsung's favor and no negative reports will shake your faith in your favorite brand.
7. Re:If this was Apple... by ducomputergeek · 2013-10-01 05:48 · Score: 1
  
  Last I check the Nexus was a rebranded, unlocked, Samsung phone.
  Futhermore, most of the common people, when they now say an "Android Phone", what they mean is a Samsung phone. That's the product they now associate with being the "Android Phone/Tablet". You'd be surprised how many don't get that LG, HTC, and others have the same "android" OS.
  In fact I think it will be interesting to see what happens in a few years and if a couple players in the Android phone market drop out, after all I don't think the other Android venders make much money selling their devices, what will happen. At some point does Samsung decide they no longer need google and have the in house expertise to fork and maintain their own version of the OS?
  
  --
  "The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
8. Re:If this was Apple... by DickBreath · 2013-10-01 05:48 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  > If Apple did this, people would be up in arms!
  
  If Apple did this, they would be suing Samsung for copying.
  
  --
  
  I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
9. Re:If this was Apple... by jpvlsmv · 2013-10-01 05:49 · Score: 1
  
  If Apple did this, people would be up in arms!
  Both Apple and Samsung use ARM CPUs.
  Now, if this had been a Surface (non-RT) tablet, people would be up in Atoms!
10. Re:If this was Apple... by waddgodd · 2013-10-01 05:49 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Wrong, they DID care about benchmarking once, while Macs were still Power PC based, then they got caught fudging the benchmarks approximately like Samsung did. They suddenly decided that benchmarks didn't matter soon thereafter. They ought to sue Samsung again, because business methods are patentable...
  
  --
  Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
11. Re:If this was Apple... by shadowrat · 2013-10-01 05:49 · Score: 1
  
  If Apple did this, people would be up in arms!
  There's a long history of apple making exaggerated claims of what their devices are going to do for you. People have been up in arms for a long time.
12. Re:If this was Apple... by gstoddart · 2013-10-01 05:50 · Score: 1
  
  You've obviously never used their Blu-Ray players.
  I've got one, and haven't found it that bad.
  Granted, there's no way in hell I'm connecting it to a network so they can decide on a whim to update it, so I haven't seen the full extent of how annoying they can be.
  But the device itself I've never had issues with ... what unspecified evil are you alluding to?
  
  --
  Lost at C:>. Found at C.
13. Re:If this was Apple... by thaylin · 2013-10-01 05:52 · Score: 1, Flamebait
  
  even if android was sluggish, which it isnt, it still would not be worth the crap that is windows phone.
  
  --
  When you cant win, ad hominem.
14. Re:If this was Apple... by Space+cowboy · 2013-10-01 05:52 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Citation required, because all I can find is: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/06/25/apple_denies_fiddling_g5_xeon/ ... which seems to be refuting the claim...
  Simon.
  
  --
  Physicists get Hadrons!
15. Re:If this was Apple... by Old97 · 2013-10-01 05:53 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  My you are full of unsupported assertions today. "Most every tech company has been caught". Really? Any evidence? "Samsung ... the good guys" You must be kidding. They copy and they clone. Apple does gold so Samsung does gold. Apple sells a 64-bit phone with a 64 bit operating system and conversion tools to take advantage of it. Samsung announces that they'll be building 64 bit phones too, one day. Of course unless Android is converted to 64 bit that will be pointless and there is nothing from Google indicating that is going to happen any time soon. Chrome OS seems to be more important to them these days anyway. And finally, "their hardware is still clearly the best". Evidence or just your opinion based on your limited experience? I've tried Apple, Nokia, HTC and Samsung and liked Samsung the least hardware wise. Consumer Reports and other customer satisfaction survey's I've seen don't rate Samsung all that highly. Apple leads the pack in every survey I've seen.
  
  --
  Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
16. Re:If this was Apple... by mspohr · 2013-10-01 06:01 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Not so much Samsung in the Nexus dept.
  Nexus One was by HTC
  Nexus 4 was by LG
  Nexus 7 is by Asus
  Nexus 10 is by Asus
  Anyway, it doesn't matter to me who makes the phone, I look at the features, OS and apps. Samsung has done a good job of marketing the Galaxy series. Some people buy because of good marketing. I still hate it when the manufacturer or the telecoms giant mess with the interface and applications... it's usually not an improvement.
  
  --
  I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
17. Re:If this was Apple... by h4rr4r · 2013-10-01 06:01 · Score: 1
  
  Why?
  If you want a closed down system you might as well get an iPhone.
18. Re:If this was Apple... by bennomatic · 2013-10-01 06:02 · Score: 1
  
  Actually, I think I've noticed a significant drop-off in the Apple hate. It used to annoy me that anything bad--even if it was incorrectly reported to look bad--that Apple was accused of would get a thousand or more vitriolic comments here on /., but recently, it seems like those numbers are waning. Even the cracking of TouchID seemed to get a pretty rational, "Ho hum, nobody expected it to be perfect, but it's still better than no security" reaction.
  
  --
  The CB App. What's your 20?
19. Re:If this was Apple... by h4rr4r · 2013-10-01 06:03 · Score: 1
  
  The Nexus 4 and up coming Nexus 5 are LG devices.
  The Galaxy Nexus was the last Samsung Nexus device and it is already over a year out of date.
  Samsung could try that, but then they lose access to the google play market and that ends their game right there.
20. Re:If this was Apple... by wchin · 2013-10-01 06:05 · Score: 1
  
  I think you are lying. Sources?
  Approximately the same way would be deliberately checking for a benchmark and artificially boosting performance to do well on that particular benchmark which is un-producable outside of that benchmark.
  That is not the same thing as choosing benchmarks your product is good and and highlighting those benchmarks in your marketing material. That's just highlighting your strengths.
21. Re:If this was Apple... by h4rr4r · 2013-10-01 06:07 · Score: 2
  
  Nexus 5 is LG as well.
  Galaxy Nexus was Samsung.
22. Re:If this was Apple... by Bill_the_Engineer · 2013-10-01 06:08 · Score: 1
  
  Last I check the Nexus was a rebranded, unlocked, Samsung phone.
  Check again, the current Nexus 4 is manufactured by LG Electronics. The first Nexus was made by HTC. The Nexus S and Galaxy Nexus were made by Samsung.
  
  Futhermore, most of the common people, when they now say an "Android Phone", what they mean is a Samsung phone. That's the product they now associate with being the "Android Phone/Tablet". You'd be surprised how many don't get that LG, HTC, and others have the same "android" OS.
  
  Citation? Nexus 4 is a very popular android phone made by LG. The "Droid" phones are manufactured by Motorola. The HTC One isn't doing bad either.
  
  In fact I think it will be interesting to see what happens in a few years and if a couple players in the Android phone market drop out, after all I don't think the other Android venders make much money selling their devices, what will happen. At some point does Samsung decide they no longer need google and have the in house expertise to fork and maintain their own version of the OS?
  I think Samsung, Motorola, HTC, and LG will continue dominate the phone market (squeezing out any potential newcomer). It's too early to give the award to Samsung. HTC is following Motorola's lead by concentrating on a single flagship line and Motorola is finally offering phones outside of Verizon in the US.
  
  --
  These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
23. Re:If this was Apple... by chucklebutte · 2013-10-01 06:09 · Score: 1
  
  BlackBerry 10 > all. Seriously the OS is phenominal!
  
  --
  Visit my Forums?
24. Re:If this was Apple... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-01 06:10 · Score: 1
  
  It isn't just that people make buying decisions based on benchmarks. It is more that review sites make purchase recommendations based on them. If you go look for "top android phones" from review sites, you tend to get ones that benchmarked well and also have decent features. If something got really good benchmark scores, it tends to move up to their top pick - and that does drive sales.
25. Re:If this was Apple... by Wookact · 2013-10-01 06:14 · Score: 2
  
  I would thought you would have to be logged in to shill, I mean how else will you get paid per post.
  
  Ohh BTW the search term "Windows phone 8 sucks" gets me 14 million hits. Obviously going by hits in Google isn't that great of a bench mark is it?
26. Re:If this was Apple... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-01 06:15 · Score: 1
  
  His original claim is right on the mark. Had Apple pulled this stunt, it would be on all the major news networks, and all the iHaters would come out of the woodwork to crucify Apple. Lawyers would come out and file class-action lawsuits on behalf of mysterious individuals that say they were harmed by Apple antics. You guys very well know that.
  But not here. Samsung does this and barely a whimper and just not much reaction from the Android community. Talk about a double-standard.
27. Re:If this was Apple... by jones_supa · 2013-10-01 06:17 · Score: 1
  
  But he is...
28. Re:If this was Apple... by larwe · 2013-10-01 06:19 · Score: 1
  
  But it's a totally different situation with Apple - because there is nobody else who makes iOS devices. So you'll never get a situation where a fake benchmark will cause someone to choose "HTC iOS phone X" instead of "Apple iOS phone X". And comparisons between different OSes are so apples to oranges (no pun intended) that I would heartily distrust them anyway.
29. Re:If this was Apple... by rea1l1 · 2013-10-01 06:22 · Score: 1
  
  I used to do that too, until I started taking them apart. So far, Samsung and LG are the easiest to disassemble and reassemble compared to HTC & iPhone.
30. Re:If this was Apple... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-01 06:32 · Score: 1
  
  Yes Android is sluggish. There are 1.79 million hits on Google complaining or giving tips on how to fix the sluggishness.
  And the term "Windows Phone raped my dog" has 65,700,000 hits.
  So, ya I hope that gets the point across to you.
31. Re:If this was Apple... by operagost · 2013-10-01 06:43 · Score: 1
  
  The fact that if you DO decide to attach it to the network so you can use the streaming features, its performance will be horrible.
  The horrible reviews for Samsung players led me to break my boycott of Sony. I have a BDP-S390 and S590 and they are great for streaming and DLNA (except that volume control is not supported... which makes sense).
  
  --
  
  Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
32. Re:If this was Apple... by thaylin · 2013-10-01 06:44 · Score: 1
  
  I think he fairly clearly showed that it is neutral.
  
  --
  When you cant win, ad hominem.
33. Re:If this was Apple... by Professr3 · 2013-10-01 06:50 · Score: 1
  
  ... 66 million? I don't want to be on this planet anymore
34. Re:If this was Apple... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-01 06:51 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Samsung denies also, i guess it's all fine then.
  Refutation and denial are not synonymous terms. While the G5 case has decent responses, Samsung's responses have been less than honest.
  With the Galaxy S4 GPU, their rationale was that other apps (not benchmarking tools) *can* enjoy the higher speed, yet to avoid heat issues this will be strictly limited in availability and time. Portable computing always has to strike this balance, so that's fine. But why then would benchmarking applications get carte blanche to run at higher speeds if the apps (including games) that people are actually using on the platform will either see no boost or a very time limited one?
  To use a car analogy, Samsung have secretly inserted a "new car smell" dispenser in their cars, and set it to be triggered when the car is driven by motoring journalists. Hooray, the amazingly persistent new car smell is touted in reviews, and then in reality most owners find the smell gone within a week. Samsung's defence? The new car smell is not just a trick they put in to fox the reviewers. The smell is available to all owners, but in order to conserve the fluid used, it'll only run at unbridled full power if the driver is named Jeremy Clarkson.
35. Re:If this was Apple... by gstoddart · 2013-10-01 06:53 · Score: 1
  
  The fact that if you DO decide to attach it to the network so you can use the streaming features, its performance will be horrible.
  I'll take your word for it.
  I've never been interested in whole streaming thing, and I think the whole idea of having my DVD player hooked up to the internet means sooner or later someone will disable something/break it for me because it can access the internet and update itself.
  I just don't trust the vendors of consumer electronics with direct access to the internet -- because they either want to gather and report data I'm not willing to allow, or because they want to be in control of the device that I purchased.
  Since I don't want any of the on-line features, there's nothing in it for me to give these things a network connection. To me it carries more down-side risk than potential benefits.
  And for a device which plays movies, I'm not giving the movie studios the option to decide they want to exert even more control over how I use it.
  
  --
  Lost at C:>. Found at C.
36. Re:If this was Apple... by shentino · 2013-10-01 06:54 · Score: 1
  
  If apple *got caught* people would be up in arms.
37. Re:If this was Apple... by waddgodd · 2013-10-01 07:09 · Score: 1
  
  It's apparently refuting the fudging part, but it's confirming that Apple DID care about benchmarks, you don't deny fudging something you don't care about at all, no?
  
  --
  Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
38. Re: If this was Apple... by Mabhatter · 2013-10-01 07:18 · Score: 1
  
  That's cause it runs Gears of Halo Theft Auto Mobile
39. Re:If this was Apple... by nomorecwrd · 2013-10-01 07:20 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  So... thats about every user of Windows Phone complaining.
40. Re: If this was Apple... by Mabhatter · 2013-10-01 07:23 · Score: 1
  
  Almost as difficult as just hitting you over the head. Then just using your fingers. (Hopefully still attached)
  That's probably the strongest case against it right there... You don't have to be AWAKE for your finger to unlock the phone. Thugs and thugs with uniforms don't have to beat a pass code out of you now.
41. Re:If this was Apple... by jeffmflanagan · 2013-10-01 07:23 · Score: 2
  
  Anand is reporting that many Android handset makers are cheating, not just Samsung, so HTC and/or Motorola may be cheating as well. They do mention that Nexus line does not cheat.
42. Re:If this was Apple... by jeffmflanagan · 2013-10-01 07:25 · Score: 1
  
  LOL, you're way too late for that astroturfing.
43. Re:If this was Apple... by alvinrod · 2013-10-01 07:25 · Score: 1
  
  If you don't want your brand tarnished, you would deny the accusations. You might not care about dogs at all, but if you were accused to kicking them out of meanness on a regular basis, you'd likely deny doing it. How much you care about something is largely irrelevant when it comes to dealing with accusations of misconduct, whether they're true or false.
44. Re:If this was Apple... by Bill_the_Engineer · 2013-10-01 07:26 · Score: 1
  
  I agree with your assessment.
  
  --
  These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
45. Re:If this was Apple... by X0563511 · 2013-10-01 07:36 · Score: 1
  
  I'd bet 95% of that is from shit the carriers forced into it...
  
  --
  For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
46. Re:If this was Apple... by X0563511 · 2013-10-01 07:39 · Score: 1
  
  What is the point of a 64-bit phone? Do you really need more than 4gb of RAM allocated to a single process on a phone?
  
  --
  For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
47. Re:If this was Apple... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-01 07:44 · Score: 1
  
  Are you implying that us android users wouldn't be "up in arms"? It affects us more. While apple sells two models of the iPhone, we have a multitude of android phones to choose from. Samsung messing with the benchmark has the potential to cause a customer to chose samsung over HTC, Google Nexus, or Motorola phone.
  No he's just hypothesizing that there is a rather large number of people on this forum who read the headline: "Samsung Fudging Benchmarks", murmur "huh.." and skip to the next story. If those same people read the headline: "Apple Fudging Benchmarks" they'd feel compelled to write a long post describing in great detail how Apple is the spawn of Lucifer because they fudge benchmarks on iDevices that these people wouldn't be caught dead using. These people are not regular Android users, they are fundamentalists to whom uncritical sycophantic admiration of Android and Google is a religion.
48. Re:If this was Apple... by msauve · 2013-10-01 07:45 · Score: 1
  
  "Why would you even consider synthetic benchmarks when choosing a phone?"
  
  Why do people ever engage in pissing contests? So they can say "my phone's faster than your phone, nah nah," to try and get a "yeah, well, my dad can beat up your dad" response.
  
  --
  "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
49. Re:If this was Apple... by msauve · 2013-10-01 07:48 · Score: 1
  
  Nokia 6100 series, FTW! Never any lag.
  
  --
  "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
50. Re:If this was Apple... by Xenx · 2013-10-01 07:57 · Score: 1
  
  It's not a matter of to a single process. It's a matter of how much is addressable by the system. The more ram you have, the more apps you can keep in memory for quicker access.
51. Re:If this was Apple... by mythosaz · 2013-10-01 08:01 · Score: 1
  
  True.
  I can't tell you how happy I've been buying the Google-direct versions of the Galaxy Nexus (original) and HTC One - both completely free of not only carrier bloat, but vendor homescreens and app-launchers.
52. Re: If this was Apple... by adamstew · 2013-10-01 08:01 · Score: 1
  
  Then don't use the fingerprint sensor. You can still use a good-old-fashioned 16 character password made up of lowercase, uppercase, numbers and symbols.
  But in introducing the feature, apple even said that 50% of users don't create a passcode, even the 4 digits one, because people find it inconvenient. The fingerprint sensor is for THOSE users. To make "good enough" security convenient.
  If you need/want something more than "good enough" you can still do that.
53. Re:If this was Apple... by TangoMargarine · 2013-10-01 08:03 · Score: 1
  
  Don't they force you to update to watch the latest discs? Or are you implying that those updates are better-tested
  
  --
  Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
54. Re:If this was Apple... by mythosaz · 2013-10-01 08:04 · Score: 1
  
  Because I don't personally have the opportunity to benchmark every phone I'm considering buying - and benchmark data provides a clearer picture than the names and speeds of similar-sounding chips.
  We know people game benchmarks - but a least we get in the ballpark.
55. Re:If this was Apple... by BronsCon · 2013-10-01 08:06 · Score: 1
  
  You know why that is? If I've invested in the Android platform, purchased a bunch of apps that I don't want to lose, and just generally don't feel like switching to a new platform, I can buy from any number of manufacturers who aren't Samsung when Samsung pulls shit like this. If I've invested in iOS, purchased a bunch of apps that I don't want to lose, and just generally don't feel like switching to a new platform, I can buy from... Apple... when Apple pulls shit like this.
  
  By insisting on being the only makers of iOS devices, Apple has put themselves in that position, for better or worse. It's been mostly for better until recently, thought that seems to be slowly changing.
  
  --
  APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
56. Re:If this was Apple... by icebike · 2013-10-01 08:15 · Score: 1
  
  Not that simple. In fact, I've never seen anyone strut up and say "wanna race phones"?
  Sure, given two of anything, the natural human thing to do is race them. Turtles, Frogs, even snails.
  But when laying out money, people try to get the best buy for the buck, and not knowing how a phone will perform once you get it loaded down with apps, means that they have to turn to something that really stresses the phone over a short period of time hoping to measure the phone's ability to remain future proof a little bit longer.
  Not always having the opportunity to load our own software onto a phone and use it for a week, we do the SAME THING that we do with EVERY other product we buy: We read specs.
  We read the specs on cameras, cars, computers, TVs, plumbers, and even your box of Cheerios. We even read the expiration dates on a Bottle of Milk. We then choose accordingly.
  Samsung saw this and decided to game the system to gain an advantage. Their gain was short lived, and quickly discovered.
  Don't take a normal behavior of seeking the best product available for the price, and try to turn it into some petty childish one-upsmanship game. That speaks more about your mindset than normal rational behavior when the market place presents you with choices.
  
  --
  Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
57. Re:If this was Apple... by X0563511 · 2013-10-01 08:17 · Score: 1
  
  Didn't we have PAE to solve that on x86?
  
  --
  For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
58. Re:If this was Apple... by gnasher719 · 2013-10-01 08:28 · Score: 1
  
  What is the point of a 64-bit phone? Do you really need more than 4gb of RAM allocated to a single process on a phone?
  Do a bit of googling about it. 64 bit = 28 general purpose 64 bit registers instead of 13 general purpose 32 bit registers. Significant advantages in Objective-C. Significant advantages in C++, like any std::string up to 22 chars using just three words of storage.
59. Re:If this was Apple... by Karlt1 · 2013-10-01 08:59 · Score: 2
  
  even if android was sluggish, which it isnt, it still would not be worth the crap that is windows phone.
  http://androidandme.com/2013/07/devices/last-years-nexus-7-may-get-lag-fix-in-4-3-ota/
  http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/27/project-butter-improves-android-4-1s-speed/
  http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/27/project-butter-improves-android-4-1s-speed/
60. Re:If this was Apple... by swb · 2013-10-01 09:04 · Score: 1
  
  How does "loading down a phone with apps" affect performance? For most phones this just means filling flash storage with apps. Generally speaking you can't run apps simultaneously and even when you can/do background apps it sucks the battery badly. And on phones the screen is too small to make use of any kind of PC style multi window multitasking even if the platform supports it (AFAIK even Android doesn't really support this). While I think you're right that it would be nice to compare phone performance, so much of it seems subjective relative to the actual user experience of GUI performance if not bound by the level of network connectivity.
61. Re:If this was Apple... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-01 09:07 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  one million times each
62. Re:If this was Apple... by dgatwood · 2013-10-01 09:10 · Score: 1
  
  Granted, there's no way in hell I'm connecting it to a network so they can decide on a whim to update it, so I haven't seen the full extent of how annoying they can be.
  Count yourself lucky. Both of mine experienced major performance degradation immediately after firmware updates, and they never fixed the bugs.
  I'm sorry, but if your Blu-Ray player can't play a DVD without pausing at the layer gap, you really have no business designing hardware. My laptop can spin up the optical drive for a few seconds every few minutes and play DVD content without stuttering. The data rate is trivially low for modern hardware to handle, so a lack of sufficient buffering for basic playback is simply inexcusable.
  
  --
  Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
63. Re:If this was Apple... by Old97 · 2013-10-01 09:12 · Score: 1
  
  It's about performance as well as improvements to the overall chip architecture. RAM addressing is not yet an issue for phones or tablets. A couple of links you might want to read about this: http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/09/17/inside-apples-64-bit-ios-7-and-the-prospects-for-a-64-bit-android http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/09/review-with-the-iphone-5s-apple-lays-groundwork-for-a-brighter-future/3/
  
  --
  Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
64. Re:If this was Apple... by icebike · 2013-10-01 09:23 · Score: 1
  
  Samsung does allow "windowed" apps. You can watch video in a window while reading email or whatever. Not terribly useful, I agree.
  But much more common. you can have many widgets running all the time, you can have a boat load of tasks running in any smartphone.
  Mostly these affect battery life by keeping your radios up and running, but lots of these run even when you are doing something on the phone, such as surfing or email, or (horrors!) talking.
  
  --
  Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
65. Re:If this was Apple... by the_B0fh · 2013-10-01 09:24 · Score: 1
  
  well, +- 20% of the ballpark anyway...
66. Re:If this was Apple... by gl4ss · 2013-10-01 10:10 · Score: 1
  
  So rooting and installing another OS? Kind of like modding via jailbreaking...
  
  and yeah that isn't available on most phones we have had on market pre-android. I was originally skeptical of android even allowing that, because allowing such on purpose was unheard of in the mobile world. pre-android there were only ver few phones that you could install unofficial firmware patches on and on those you could do it not because the manufacturer wanted but because the manufacturer was incompetent(Siemens sx-1 was one such device - and a bunch of windowsmobile/ce devices from htc, which were sold under multiple brand names at that time).
  
  --
  world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
67. Re:If this was Apple... by Wookact · 2013-10-01 10:13 · Score: 1
  
  It is obvious that your shill detector is not working.
  
  Let us see. The post was offtopic. The post used faulty logic trying to make google hits as evidence of a serious problem. The post also blatantly suggested an alternative product. Frankly I like both android and apple products, and I concede that windows phones may have a niche. I still call out a shill when I see one, no matter who they are shilling for.
68. Re:If this was Apple... by Solandri · 2013-10-01 10:17 · Score: 1
  
  Samsung ... the good guys" You must be kidding. They copy and they clone. Apple does gold so Samsung does gold.
  Oooh! Oooh! Can I play too? LG makes a completely touchscreen interface phone, so Apple does too. Samsung offers phones with replaceable colored backs, so Apple does too. Android phones tended to have bigger screens than the iPhone, so Apple made the iPhone screen bigger. All the Android tablet makers offered a higher DPI than the original iPad, so Apple did too.
  
  There are revolutionary changes, and there are evolutionary changes. Making evolutionary changes (like a thinner device, or a higher resolution screen, or going from 32-bit to 64-bit) is not copying. I'm not even sure offering different color phones qualifies as either revolutionary or evolutionary, but it's so damn obvious that there's no way it goes into the revolutionary category. If that's what you're relying on to base your accusations of copying, you're grasping at straws.
  
  Apple sells a 64-bit phone with a 64 bit operating system and conversion tools to take advantage of it. Samsung announces that they'll be building 64 bit phones too, one day.
  Anyone old enough to have gone through the 32-bit to 64-bit Windows transition should know that except for some specialized applications, 64-bit doesn't really get you much additional performance. Yes it'll dramatically speed up double long int operations (2x), though I think the only place those are used are on infinite precision calculators. And it'll improve hardcore math calculations (finding primes sped up about 35%). But with byte-wise applications like data compression, there's no speedup. The other main advantage of 64-bit - flat memory space - isn't a pressing need for smartphones at present. So the only common smartphone apps I can see benefiting from 64-bit are maybe some games. Smartphones simply aren't the platform of choice for the heavy number-crunching applications where 64-bit processors really help.
  
  The only reason Apple went with 64-bit so early is marketing. They have a history of discontinuing support for technologies while they still have a lot of life in them, in favor of new technologies which haven't yet been established. Sometimes this works (replacing the 5.25" floppy with 3.5" floppies, dropping floppy drives in favor of optical) and they end up leading the industry. Other times it backfires (Firewire, Lightning) and leaves them stuck with a standard different from the rest of the industry (USB). Because they dive into these new technologies head-first, they try to give their users and developers years of advance warning so they can prepare. The introduction of 64-bit processors in smartphones is clearly premature, but they're doing it as a heads up to their users and for the marketing buzz that comes with being first.
  
  Anyway, 64-bit ARM has been available for over a year now. Just that nobody (aside from AMD) went with it prior to Apple because there was no pressing need for it. Samsung saying they'd go to 64-bit as well isn't copying Apple. It's their way of saying it's no big deal and they were scheduled to transition to it too eventually.
  
  . Consumer Reports and other customer satisfaction survey's I've seen don't rate Samsung all that highly. Apple leads the pack in every survey I've seen.
  Consumer reports rates the Samsung S4 #1 well above the iPhone. Prior to that, LG was #1. The iPhone hasn't been #1 in their rankings for a couple years now.
  
  Samsung topped Apple in the latest smartphone customer satisfaction survey.
69. Re:If this was Apple... by gstoddart · 2013-10-01 10:34 · Score: 1
  
  Don't they force you to update to watch the latest discs? Or are you implying that those updates are better-tested
  I have no idea. I can tell you that my Samsung BluRay player has never been connected to a network and has worked just fine for almost two years.
  If it's done any updates, it's been directly from the disc and never told me about it. And I can't imagine every disc has updates for every brand of player on it.
  So either those upgrades are unnecessary and only get flagged if the player is connected to the network, they're been installed without me being asked, or I've never encountered a disc which required it.
  But there has never been a network connection to the device for it to get updates from any other source, and there never will be.
  
  --
  Lost at C:>. Found at C.
70. Re:If this was Apple... by T-Bone-T · 2013-10-01 11:25 · Score: 1
  
  I'm skipping blu-ray and just using streaming to get HD movies. I got a Star Trek blu-ray combo pack mostly for the download code. With the built-in VUDU app I can watch it in 1080p/7.1. I can't get that with the DVD. Technically, it doesn't look as good as the blu-ray that I have no player for but it looks better than the DVD. The best part about the download code, though, was I also used it in iTunes for the audio commentary special feature.
71. Re:If this was Apple... by Dahamma · 2013-10-01 11:33 · Score: 1
  
  Except you specifically claimed they fudged benchmarks "approximately like Samsung did"... so are you saying Samsung didn't fudge benchmarks or you were saying things that were untrue?
  But anyway, that was over 10 years ago. Apple's market cap was under $9B and they were a couple bad business decisions from bankruptcy. No one gives a shit what they did on a long dead platform a decade ago, nor does it have any relevancy to their current business model that basically boils down to a $600 bi-annual iPhone subscription, aka "we are only really competing against our last year's model because we have created a complete hardware and software walled garden and bizarrely people love it..."
72. Re:If this was Apple... by thegarbz · 2013-10-01 11:38 · Score: 1
  
  Funny. My updated improved the performance of the menu and fixed some bugs in the 3D performance which led to ghosting.
73. Re:If this was Apple... by waddgodd · 2013-10-01 12:01 · Score: 1
  
  You forget that they DID do the benchmarks they were accusing of fudging in the first place. Again, if they didn't care, why were they doing them? So, not only did they care to do the benchmarks, they also cared enough to do ethically challenged things with the benchmarks AND THEN attempt to cover it up
  
  --
  Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
74. Re:If this was Apple... by waddgodd · 2013-10-01 12:02 · Score: 1
  
  you don't deny fudging something you don't care about at all, no?
  You're joking, right? No? Okay, then don't bother denying that you masturbate using raw liver while soaking in raw sewage, as it's obvisouly something you don't care about.
  Or... DO YOU?!
  We know what sites YOU look for entertainment on now, don't we....
  
  --
  Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
75. Re:If this was Apple... by waddgodd · 2013-10-01 12:06 · Score: 1
  
  "apparently" is SUCH a nice word, it allows you to argue against hypotheticals without actually admitting squat. You ought to try learning what it is sometime.... And it DOES have relevancy to "If Apple did this, people would be up in arms!", as they clearly were accused of it once, and people clearly still buy Apple products.
  
  --
  Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
76. Re:If this was Apple... by waddgodd · 2013-10-01 12:33 · Score: 1
  
  Okay, apple fanbois, you can all now seriously bugger off. I was pointing out that Apple DID care about benchmarks, to the point of cheating. I now have three people calling me a complete liar about that, even though there are also two different cases brought up of some alleged cheats (neither of which was the case I was thinking of) which were "well, it's not nearly the same caliber of cheat". WHO THE HELL CARES? They at this point CLEARLY cared about benchmarks, even going to the depths of trying to tweak the numbers to make themselves look better than they objectively were. Get the fuck over yourselves already, Neither of the Steves is going to give you a hummer for this, one's kinda living impaired and the other stopped caring about the company PRECISELY BECAUSE OF YOU IDIOTS.
  
  --
  Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
77. Re:If this was Apple... by _merlin · 2013-10-01 13:12 · Score: 1
  
  Which Samsung printers and washers suck? I've had a Samsung CLP-550N commercial laser for a decade now, and it's been great. I also have a Samsung SW50USP washing machine, which I bought because it was one of only two models that would fit in the space I have, and it's been fine for the three and a half years I've had it. I keep hearing about sucky Samsung consumer electronics, but I seem to have lucked out with the stuff I've bought.
78. Re:If this was Apple... by Cacadril · 2013-10-01 14:20 · Score: 1
  
  Strange.
  Windows phone 8 sucks: About 21 100 000 results (0,29 seconds)
  "Windows phone 8 sucks": About 139 000 results (0,22 seconds)
  
  --
  There is no substitute for common sense. Especially, no body of rules will do.
79. Re:If this was Apple... by aminorex · 2013-10-01 14:27 · Score: 1
  
  64 bit wide bus means 2x the bandwidth compared to 32 bit wide bus. Of course that's a gross oversimplification in general, but it's almost true in embedded.
  
  --
  -I like my women like I like my tea: green-
80. Re: If this was Apple... by ElderKorean · 2013-10-01 14:42 · Score: 2
  
  But in introducing the feature, apple even said that 50% of users don't create a passcode, even the 4 digits one, because people find it inconvenient. The fingerprint sensor is for THOSE users. To make "good enough" security convenient.
  I like the locking feature, but would like it to be GPS based, or even phone tower / wifi name. When I'm at home I don't want (or need) a lock on my phone, but when I'm away from home I do. Work could be an options for people too, but I work in a school - there's no way I'm leaving that unlocked, even on my desk.
81. Re:If this was Apple... by exomondo · 2013-10-01 17:52 · Score: 1
  
  Who cares who had what before who? If you care about that then you should avoid all tech companies, they all copy eachother.
82. Re:If this was Apple... by Dahamma · 2013-10-01 18:02 · Score: 1
  
  If you don't think the "people interested in SPEC results on high end PPC vs Xeon workstations" and "people who like new iPhone go faster" are mostly non-overlapping sets, you are apparently in need of some bizness larnin' yourself...
  Besides, the implication of the comment was that people are not up in arms about Samsung's trickery, while nothing about the posts indicates that's true (mostly the opposite, in fact), making the Apple accusation pretty much a non-sequiter to the discussion anyway.
83. Re:If this was Apple... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-01 18:56 · Score: 1
  
  That's because YOUR dog is ugly.
84. Re:If this was Apple... by LiENUS · 2013-10-01 21:15 · Score: 1
  
  The Galaxy Nexus was the last Samsung Nexus device and it is already over a year out of date.
  Its closer to two years out of data and the Nexus 10 is the latest Samsung Nexus
85. Re:If this was Apple... by Plumpaquatsch · 2013-10-01 21:24 · Score: 1
  
  even if android was sluggish, which it isnt,
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVDMOP1pWCQ
  http://gigaom.com/2012/01/19/video-android-touch-lag-and-a-possible-solution/
  http://appglimpse.com/blog/touchmarks-i-smart-phone-touch-screen-latencies/
  
  --
  Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
86. Re:If this was Apple... by Lord+Maud'Dib · 2013-10-01 21:43 · Score: 1
  
  As was Nexus S (by Samsung). Still sporting one myself.
87. Re:If this was Apple... by PPalmgren · 2013-10-02 01:11 · Score: 1
  
  Just some info, early adopters of blu-ray who went with Samsung got screwed. They pulled a Sony and the software updates required to play newer BD-movies removed the functionality to play DVDs. Why? I think because they skimped on the memory.
  Of course they didnt' compensate or replace all 3 I bought (Mom, Brother, Me). I was rightly pissed off and haven't bought a Samsung product since.
88. Re:If this was Apple... by X0563511 · 2013-10-02 01:29 · Score: 1
  
  I was under the impression that 64-bit, if anything, reduces performance. Perhaps all that was x86-specific. I'll have to look over those links when I have time - thank you.
  
  --
  For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
89. Re: If this was Apple... by Old97 · 2013-10-02 02:21 · Score: 1
  
  Every survey I've seen. So I'm questioning the GP's sweeping assertion. The iPhone has a 90% brand retention rate when buyers replace the current phones. Android users tend to experiment more so none of the android manufacturers can match that. It doesn't really mean Apple is better or worse, it's just that you can't claim Samsung is obviously better - unless you are just expressing a personal opinion. JD Power consistently finds that the Apple iPhone ranks first in satisfaction. Consumer Reports depends on the question they are asking and their mood so they have results for everybody's taste. JD Powers http://www.phonearena.com/news/J.D.-Power-ranks-Apple-first-in-US-customer-satisfaction-followed-by-Nokia-and-Samsung_id41087 ACSI http://www.theacsi.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=281:press-release-may-2012&catid=13&Itemid=357
  
  --
  Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
90. Re:If this was Apple... by Richy_T · 2013-10-02 02:51 · Score: 1
  
  Doesn't the spec allow updates from the discs themselves?
91. Re:If this was Apple... by dgatwood · 2013-10-02 02:56 · Score: 1
  
  If you're printing only pie charts and other bold colors, they're probably fine, but for photo reproduction, at least in my limited experience, they leave much to be desired. My first experience with Samsung laser printers was going around a trade show asking for sample prints. All the other vendors provided good sample prints with stunning contrast and great color reproduction. The Samsung sample print was a dark, muddy, blotchy mess—easily the worst looking reproduction of a photograph I had ever seen. I've seen a fair number of folks make comments about these printers producing output that looks like that, so I never bothered to give them another chance after that.
  The remarkable thing was that their prints were even worse than HP, which had previously held my record for worst print quality. I really don't understand why anyone buys HP printers. Their halftoning is a horribly banded joke on literally every HP printer I've ever used, from the oldest black-and-white printers to the newest color printers, from inkjet to laser. How anyone considers such poor output to be acceptable is beyond me.
  I settled on the Konica Minolta 7450 II Grafx, and have never been disappointed.
  
  --
  Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
92. Re:If this was Apple... by jpvlsmv · 2013-10-02 05:07 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah, but "people would be up in Intels" doesn't have the same ring to it.
93. Re:If this was Apple... by farble1670 · 2013-10-02 14:20 · Score: 1
  
  Generally speaking you can't run apps simultaneously and even when you can/do background apps it sucks the battery badly
  no. there's typically one foreground app you are interacting with, but your app can be doing almost anything in the background (on android).
  if you look at battery usage, it's always dominated by the screen. no background app even shows up in the my top 10 battery consumers (which means for me, it's consuming 1% of my battery).
94. Re:If this was Apple... by Plumpaquatsch · 2013-10-03 10:24 · Score: 1
  
  http://www.anandtech.com/show/7384/state-of-cheating-in-android-benchmarks
  "With the exception of Apple and Motorola, literally every single OEM we’ve worked with ships (or has shipped) at least one device that runs this silly CPU optimization. It's possible that older Motorola devices might've done the same thing, but none of the newer devices we have on hand exhibited the behavior."
  
  --
  Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
95. Re:If this was Apple... by Plumpaquatsch · 2013-10-03 10:56 · Score: 1
  
  What is the point of a 64-bit phone? Do you really need more than 4gb of RAM allocated to a single process on a phone?
  http://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday-qa-2013-09-27-arm64-and-you.html - probably unsuited for the faux-nerds around here.
  
  --
  Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
96. Re:If this was Apple... by bennomatic · 2013-10-07 08:14 · Score: 1
  
  LOL, there's the Apple Hate I was looking for.
  
  --
  The CB App. What's your 20?
Should suprise nobody. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-01 05:36 · Score: 1

They probably need the OC to overcome all the fuck-awful samsung bloatware they load on their devices. We don't want your shitty services Samsung. Just give us a clean device.
Koreans will be Koreans by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-01 05:37 · Score: 1

If someone is surprised Koreans are willing to cheat, rip off, etc to get ahead... well you haven't really been paying attention.
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".

--

I read the internet for the articles.
1. Re:Should have done a battery benchmark by jovius · 2013-10-01 05:59 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  The benchmarking itself seems to be flawed. Samsung wants to benchmark the devices at their full capacity, to see what they are capable of (the higher setting is reached in normal use of some apps anyway). The testers would probably like to do real world comparison tests (and not rely just on numbers). I don't see Samsung doing anything wrong here, even though the benchmarking apps are specifically chosen.
2. Re:Should have done a battery benchmark by jandrese · 2013-10-01 07:10 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  They're changing the operating profile of their phone to inflate the benchmark results. In real life you would never be able to achieve numbers like that on a phone with a halfway decent battery life, even on applications that behave similarly to the benchmark. No normal use would achieve numbers found in the benchmark, they can't because they involve running the phone super hot and burning through the battery in no time, even when idle.
  
  If the hack were to go to full power when plugged into the wall, then I could maybe see a case for this being legitimate, since it would mean you could theoretically achieve the same results by simply playing your game or whatnot while plugged in, but because they're only switching on full power mode for a handful of specific benchmark applications there is just no excuse.
  
  --
  
  I read the internet for the articles.
3. Re:Should have done a battery benchmark by Xyde · 2013-10-01 07:37 · Score: 1
  
  4 cores at 2.3Ghz? It might catch on fire. This is using the big.LITTLE chip right? I don't think they're designed with a thermal envelope to stay fully clocked and on for that long.
4. Re:Should have done a battery benchmark by jovius · 2013-10-01 08:06 · Score: 1
  
  I'm not sure if they actually inflate anything, because they simply set the device to the highest setting (and it's not higher than where the device sometimes operate even normally).
  If you read that Ars Technica article it's evident that the max setting is reached in typical camera use for example. It's not limited to benchmarking apps. For benchmarking apps it's always on. This would be consistent with the idea of testing the device at max capacity. How about if the OS itself is hacked to give 533 MHz constantly to everything? Does that mean that the benchmarks become legit again?
  What I meant about real world tests is something what's been recently done with the GFX cards for instance. The benchmarking is faulty, if it only relies on numbers.
5. Re:Should have done a battery benchmark by icebike · 2013-10-01 08:34 · Score: 1
  
  The benchmarking itself seems to be flawed. Samsung wants to benchmark the devices at their full capacity, to see what they are capable of (the higher setting is reached in normal use of some apps anyway). The testers would probably like to do real world comparison tests (and not rely just on numbers). I don't see Samsung doing anything wrong here, even though the benchmarking apps are specifically chosen.
  You have a point, that a device should be tested to its highest capacity.
  However, if EVERY other application is PREVENTED from achieving that highest capacity the tests are already biased.
  And in truth, that is not always a BAD thing. After all, locking the other cores to full power for a test, but preventing that for day to day usage is simply a battery saving feature. Having multiple cores is useful so that other work can be performed at the same time as your phone checks mail or some such.
  But on the other hand, why put in special features to defeat the NORMAL operation of the core-switching and allow it ONLY for benchmarks?
  After all, if the benchmarks can in fact stress the phones enough to spin up all the Cores, that would be a useful measure of performance, and it would also show what you can expect when you are banging away at some video game. On the other hand, if you can't actually light up all four cores in normal usage, then why have 4 cores at all?
  Samsung is clearly defeating some of their battery saving technology for benchmarks, and it amounts to 20% better measurements.
  What they have unwittingly done is show us the huge performance penalty this battery saving logic imposes.
  Powering up additional cores appears to be hugely expensive in terms of battery power, so expensive, that Samsung won't allow any other software to do it on a routine basis.
  Have they just made the case for dual cores more attractive and quad cores less so?
  
  --
  Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
6. Re:Should have done a battery benchmark by gabebear · 2013-10-01 23:08 · Score: 1
  Bingo! They only boosted benchmarks. In the linked article they didn't mention it, but in the Note3's benchmark breakdown they list the exact apps that are boosted(only benchmark apps). http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/galaxy-note-3s-benchmarking-adjustments-inflate-scores-by-up-to-20/
  
  com.aurorasoftworks.quadrant.ui.standard
  com.aurorasoftworks.quadrant.ui.advanced
  com.aurorasoftworks.quadrant.ui.professional
  com.redlicense.benchmark.sqlite
  com.antutu.ABenchMark
  com.greenecomputing.linpack
  com.greenecomputing.linpackpro
  com.glbenchmark.glbenchmark27
  com.glbenchmark.glbenchmark25
  com.glbenchmark.glbenchmark21
  ca.primatelabs.geekbench2
  com.eembc.coremark
  com.flexycore.caffeinemark
  eu.chainfire.cfbench
  gr.androiddev.BenchmarkPi
  com.smartbench.twelve
  com.passmark.pt_mobile
  se.nena.nenamark2
  com.samsung.benchmarks
  com.samsung.benchmarks:db
  com.samsung.benchmarks:es1
  com.samsung.benchmarks:es2
  com.samsung.benchmarks:g2d
  com.samsung.benchmarks:fs
  com.samsung.benchmarks:ks
  com.samsung.benchmarks:cpu
Re:Humans will be Humans by 93+Escort+Wagon · 2013-10-01 05:41 · Score: 4, Insightful

If someone is surprised Humans are willing to cheat, rip off, etc to get ahead... well you haven't really been paying attention.
Fixed that for you.
I wouldn't want people to unfairly categorize you as a racist moron.

--
#DeleteChrome
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?

--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
1. Re:Does not computer by aitikin · 2013-10-01 05:46 · Score: 1
  
  I'm with you. The only way that makes sense to me is if the code is written such that it works by reading what exactly the app is trying to do and then responding due to that, but even then, it would stand to reason that it'd do that for any intensive app that does gaming or something like that, thus backing up Samsung's claim...
  
  --
  "Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
2. Re:Does not computer by jandrese · 2013-10-01 05:46 · Score: 1
  
  The Note was a couple of percent faster on renamed benchmark apps, and a whopping 20% faster on normally named benchmark apps. The point is that they were already faster so cheating wasn't even necessary.
  
  --
  
  I read the internet for the articles.
3. Re:Does not computer by Cinder6 · 2013-10-01 05:52 · Score: 1
  
  I wouldn't call it damning, either, but it doesn't prove that the optimizations aren't app specific. The phone might still bench faster with non-renamed tools than with renamed ones (indeed, that's what the summary seems to claim). I would argue, however, that if the Note 3 beats the G2 "naturally", then there wasn't really any need to cheat this way.
  Regardless, I'm with others: it's misleading at best, false advertising at worst.
  
  --
  If you can't convince them, convict them.
4. Re:Does not computer by Space+cowboy · 2013-10-01 05:59 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  There is a file containing a list of all the common benchmarking apps, and everything in the list is a benchmarking app - nothing else. When one of those packages is run, the phone locks the frequency of all cores to fMax and also seems to fiddle with the GPU.
  The result is a battery-nightmare, but a boost of 20% to *only* benchmark apps. This is despicable - plain and simple.
  See http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/galaxy-note-3s-benchmarking-adjustments-inflate-scores-by-up-to-20/
  Simon.
  
  --
  Physicists get Hadrons!
5. Re:Does not computer by Bill+Dimm · 2013-10-01 06:01 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Here is what the article actually says:
  
  The ironic thing is that even with the benchmark booster disabled, the Note 3 still comes out faster than the G2 in this test. If the intent behind the boosting was simply to ensure that the Note 3 came out ahead in the benchmark race, it doesn't appear to have been necessary in the first place.
  Apparently the "damning" part was completely fabricated by the submitter.
6. Re:Does not computer by prisoner-of-enigma · 2013-10-01 06:21 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  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?
  
  It's not app-specific, it's app *name* specific. It's analogous to the Quake/Quack benchmark scandal years (OMG, more than a decade...time flies) ago. Samsung wrote this boosting protocol to enable itself when running benchmarks and *only* when running benchmarks. There is no legitimate way to invoke it, so no user will ever see the benefit of it when running any app *other than* the benchmark itself.
  For the inevitable car analogy: you take a Samsung car for a test drive, and when you floor it you feel 200hp worth of acceleration. Since the car is identical in almost every other aspect to competing HTC cars and Motorola cars (same price, similar trim, same engine) but they only make you feel about 150hp worth of acceleration, you opt for the Samsung car. Only when you drive it off the lot, you only feel 150hp worth of acceleration. You take it back to the dealer thinking something's wrong only to be informed the car will only give you 200hp when in "test drive by prospective customer" mode, and now that you've bought the car you're no longer in that category and cannot invoke it.
  
  --
  In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
7. Re:Does not computer by moteyalpha · 2013-10-01 06:30 · Score: 1
  
  Looks like everybody is playing games to boost scores or readers. I wonder if that works for me , out damn spot.
  
  Here is what the damning article actually says:
  Apparently the "damning" part was completely fabricated by the submitter.
  This kind of stuff is done by everybody. I was forced to go to COMDEX once and marketing wanted something to draw people at the show and so somebody :) created a " matching tweak" because they looked in the competitors code and saw a cheat. I have seen some really good bench mark cheats and what I saw most at COMDEX was engineers upset because somebody else's cheat was so flagrant and over the top that it reflected poorly on the credibility of their cheating.
  YMMV pretty much says it.
8. Re:Does not computer by Gibgezr · 2013-10-01 06:58 · Score: 1
  
  Looks like the submitter confused irony with "damning". Not exactly great journalistic writing in the summaries provided by submitters lately. Meh, that's what we get for paying them absolutely nothing I guess.
9. Re:Does not computer by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-01 07:12 · Score: 1
  
  It's not "more damning", but it's still absolutely 100% clear that it's being applied only to specific bencmarks. Check out the original article for the best information, but here's a more accurate summary:
  (1) a benchmark with its original name intact is a whopping 20% faster than on the equivalently specced G2
  (2) a benchmark that has been renamed is in the same ballpark, but maybe a few percent faster than the G2
  After decompiling the code, you actually see the list of applications where this speed boost is applied, and it's ONLY benchmarks. No real applications receive this boost, ever -- only benchmarks. Plus, the benchmarks themselves are certainly not making a request for device-melting speed boosts.
  What that quote is referring to with the renamed (stealth) benchmarks still being faster is referring two things: First, this cheating wasn't even necessary, because it would have won most benchmarks by a couple percent anyway. Second, even so, it's possible there's something else fishy going on to make these benchmarks perform slightly faster on the Note 3 even with the obvious cheating neutered (though we don't know what it is, it's possibly more cheating, but possibly benign).
10. Re:Does not computer by Minwee · 2013-10-01 07:56 · Score: 1
  
  Ironically, many people aren't clear on what "ironic" means.
11. Re:Does not computer by icebike · 2013-10-01 08:47 · Score: 1
  
  I'd have thought it would prove the principle that the optimizations aren't app specific.
  The optimizations ARE app specific, in that they are specific to all apps except benchmarks.
  Granted, you can twist your mind around to see the reasoning behind it, but in doing so you must come to the conclusion that using all 4 cores is so expensive in terms of battery power that running 4 cores is for the most part forbidden. And if forbidden, why have 4 cores?
  It locking fore cores to high power mode yielded a 2% advantage in performance this wouldn't be a big deal.
  But it yields a 20% performance boost in an app that is already stressing the processor.
  Doesn't that mean that the penalty for allowing apps to spin up 4 cores to handle peak load is SO BATTERY INTENSIVE, that Samsung won't allow it?
  Isn't that an argument for two cores?
  
  --
  Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
12. Re:Does not computer by icebike · 2013-10-01 08:50 · Score: 1
  
  The Note was a couple of percent faster on renamed benchmark apps, and a whopping 20% faster on normally named benchmark apps. The point is that they were already faster so cheating wasn't even necessary.
  Not really. A couple of percent faster is not humanly detectable. 20% is.
  Any programmer worth his pay can tune code to achieve 2%.
  
  --
  Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
13. Re:Does not computer by icebike · 2013-10-01 08:53 · Score: 2
  
  Why did you feed us a link to the exact same Article as the Summary does?
  Did you think that would trick us into reading the full article?
  This is Slashdot. We are wise to those ploys.
  
  --
  Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
14. Re:Does not computer by gabebear · 2013-10-01 23:11 · Score: 1
  
  Read the linked Note3 article, they list the apps that get this boost. There is nothing but benchmark apps(no games, productivity apps, anything-else)
Yawn by sunking2 · 2013-10-01 05:41 · Score: 3, Insightful

And 95% of consumers could care less as long as the screen looks nice and the battery lasts more than 2 hours.
1. Re:Yawn by sharklasers · 2013-10-01 11:47 · Score: 1
  
  Well sure. We don't pushing companies for acting in scummy ways, either because
  (1) People aren't aware of things such as this, which demonstrate a certain corporate attitude
  (2) People are aware, but don't care
  (3) People are aware, but aren't surprised, because they expect this to be par for the course with most companies and if you were to boycott every single company which has done something scummy, dodgy or immoral at some point, you'd basically have to step away from most forms of technology and products.
  There is absolutely nothing to stop companies from being dicks in this manner.
Samsung != Android by Freshly+Exhumed · 2013-10-01 05:42 · Score: 2

Take it out on Samsung for doing evil, or at the very least getting caught at it.

--
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
1. Re:Samsung != Android by oodaloop · 2013-10-01 06:15 · Score: 2
  
  And who exactly is blaming Android? Samsung is called out in the title and almost every sentence in the fantastic summary. And the word Android is only used once to refer to the benchamarking apps.
  
  --
  Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
No shock ... by gstoddart · 2013-10-01 05:43 · Score: 4, Insightful

There's lies, damned lies, statistics, and vendor performance numbers.
I'm a little disappointed that there isn't actually any penalties for fudging your benchmarks -- it's blatantly lying to consumers about your product.
And to me, that seems like it's bordering on fraud.

--
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
1. Re:No shock ... by jones_supa · 2013-10-01 06:37 · Score: 1
  
  I'm a little disappointed that there isn't actually any penalties for fudging your benchmarks
  But there are. For example here in Finland you could release the hounds of KKV (Competition and Consumer Authority).
Huh? by dgatwood · 2013-10-01 05:44 · Score: 3, Insightful

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.
Wait, what? How is that more damning? It sounds like that means the benchmark is faster even without cheating, which means that they've changed the kernel scheduler/idle timers/clock stepping in a way that, at least for the sorts of tests performed in the benchmark, improves performance—presumably because their case design and/or battery capacity is better, allowing them to get away with less processor throttling. That sounds like it is almost inarguably a good thing. And that's coming from somebody who has dealt with several of Samsung's products and hated almost all of them. What's with the hate?
Unless, of course, they're being too aggressive about keeping the clock speed high, in which case you might argue that their battery life isn't what it should be... but that's pretty subjective.

--
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
1. Re:Huh? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-01 06:13 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  I was perplexed too. After reading the article, I figured it out:
  It's damning in the sense that it's meant to skew comparisons with other Android devices, not to make it look better than their own previous offerings.
2. Re:Huh? by Imazalil · 2013-10-01 07:10 · Score: 1
  
  The summary is very badly written. The Note 3 running non-cheating (renamed) benchmarks is a few percent faster than the G2. The Note 3 running as is with the cheating code in place runs about 20% faster than the G2.
Re:Humans will be Humans by Space+cowboy · 2013-10-01 05:55 · Score: 3, Insightful

That's fair comment on the original post, but let's narrow it down a bit...
"If someone is surprised that a manufacturer with a track-record of fudging benchmarks is willing to cheat, rip off, etc to get ahead... well you haven't really been paying attention"
Not all humans are morally and ethically bankrupt. Samsung (as a corporate entity) is though.
Simon

--
Physicists get Hadrons!
Remember NVIDIA by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-01 06:02 · Score: 1

They fudged 3D Mark benchmarks by optimizing specifically for one of the demos. When someone tried debug mode in which you could freely rotate the camera, the scene was incorrectly rendered. The problem would disappear when renaming the executable. Those were the days of FX 5XXX cards which were somewhat inferior to R3XX chips, especially because of inability to use FP24 in shaders (only 32 or 16 bit precision). This wasn't the only incident, though. ATI had it's share too. At some point Catalyst CC even introduced an option to turn game detection (and optimizations) on and off.
No Implication by SuperKendall · 2013-10-01 06:15 · Score: 4, Insightful

Are you implying that us android users wouldn't be "up in arms"?
No implication is needed, we can see quite plainly there is very little outcry over this, just as there wasn't before. Android users simply accept this is the way things are, in a way they do not with any Apple problem whatsoever.

--
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
1. Re:No Implication by eagee · 2013-10-01 07:32 · Score: 1
  
  I disagree, I don't buy Samsung products for this very reason, and I haven't bought an Apple product since our iPad 1 got upgraded to a version that barely works (with no option to downgrade - bastards). I don't have the time to protest crap companies, I just don't buy their crap.
2. Re:No Implication by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-01 08:14 · Score: 1
  
  Take old OS, hold Option/Alt key, click "Update", browse to file, and click OK. It's really not that hard. I would expect that even a newb on /. could figure out how to install a custom OS on an iPhone. It works just as well for downgrades, as it does for any customized OS.
  It's pretty common knowledge and worth a Google.
3. Re:No Implication by schlachter · 2013-10-01 09:20 · Score: 2
  
  Apple is held to a higher standard among consumers and industry for their behavior than Android makers are. This is just fact. Good news is that for the most part, they meet that standard.
  
  --
  My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
4. Re:No Implication by triffid_98 · 2013-10-01 11:45 · Score: 1
  
  Even the claim that it's overclocking is dubious.
  Is it? You're allowing the CPU to clock to a higher Mhz rating than it does by default. That is overclocking in a nutshell. Whether it happens in software (your example), firmware (ex. pretty much any MSI/ABIT board ever) or hardware (ex. any recent Intel chip) it's all essentially the same thing.
  
  This is of course, nothing new to CyanogenMod users since they've had this capability (and many more) pretty much forever.
5. Re:No Implication by exomondo · 2013-10-01 16:12 · Score: 1
  
  It's because Android users can move on to different manufacturers so when one manufacturer (albeit the biggest of them all in this case) pulls some bullshit stunt like this they can just say "oh when i said Android i didn't mean *Samsung* Android" and many will consider that a benefit, using 'Android' when talking about devices in general is pretty disingenuous since it can mean anything from cheap chinese featurephones up to expensive iPhone competitors and of course this impacts just about every aspect of the operating system, features and user experience.
  For some reason the stupidity of arguing over 'Android performance' is lost on many people, anybody defending 'Android' (in terms of performance, and I suppose features dependent on specific hardware too) rather than a particular version on a particular device, is an idiot. For example the performance of my Nexus 7 has been up and down across various versions of Android (it's been well-documented) so it's moronic to make some all-encompassing statement regarding Android performance when even on the flagship devices it isn't consistent, much less all the other parties building official and unofficial (non-OHA members) devices.
Some People just have to cheat by kawabago · 2013-10-01 06:23 · Score: 1

It's how Bill Gates built his fortune.
Re:Humans will be Humans by jones_supa · 2013-10-01 06:25 · Score: 1

If someone is surprised Humans are willing to cheat, rip off, etc to get ahead... well you haven't really been paying attention.
Fixed that for you.
I wouldn't want people to unfairly categorize you as a racist moron.
Samsung represents a very big chunk of Korean electronics industry and they have the responsibility to choose what kind of image they want to give about the practices of that particular industry.
On individual level, I believe there are many honest Korean people too.
5s smokes S4 by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-01 06:38 · Score: 1

Your precious gizmag article didn't benchmark the S4 and 5s (and surprisingly did not provide battery-life statistics for the S4, which has been out for a while now). If they did, they'd find the 5s is twice as fast as the S4--basically as fast as the Note 3. All this speed is achieved with fewer cores and at lower GHz, because the 5s is a smart, custom design that even includes a motion co-processor. The S4 can not be reasonably used one-handed either, unless you play in the NBA.
Re:Humans will be Humans by operagost · 2013-10-01 06:44 · Score: 2

Yeah, we can only unfairly categorize 'mericans here.

--

Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
All of this and the benchmarks are still subpar by the+computer+guy+nex · 2013-10-01 07:00 · Score: 1

Battery life still behind the iPhone: http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph7376/58409.png

Browser speed still behind the iPhone: http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph7376/58440.png

Graphics performance still behind the iPhone: http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph7376/58425.png

For a device this much larger and heavier, you would expect they could overclock the chipset and get more performance than this.
1. Re:All of this and the benchmarks are still subpar by jeffmflanagan · 2013-10-01 07:45 · Score: 1
  
  How's that sub-par? It's the fastest phone available that doesn't lock you into Apple's walled garden. The iPhone isn't really useful for comparison, because then you're stuck with all the limitations that go with Apple products.
2. Re:All of this and the benchmarks are still subpar by Ecuador · 2013-10-01 10:49 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Battery life still behind the iPhone: http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph7376/58409.png
  
  You are comparing a phone with a 4 inch screen, with a "phone" that has a 5.7 inch screen. You can't compare battery life when the screen is what uses up most of the power. If you want a huge screen you have to compromise on battery life (and many other things - seriously, the note is ridiculously big to use as an every-day phone).
  
  Browser speed still behind the iPhone: http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph7376/58440.png
  
  I don't suppose Samsung can do much about that. It is quite possible that with the same CPU, an Android would still be slower than an iOS device. Sure, Google has made a fast Java VM, but it still is a Java VM, right? For example, I had a Nokia N9 running Meego/Maemo. It could run circles around Android phones with the same CPU.
  
  Graphics performance still behind the iPhone: http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph7376/58425.png
  
  Ehm, this result (to which you cleverly linked directly - hiding the context) is ran in native resolution. The Note has almost 3x the iphone's resolution, so it would be pretty strange to come on top in fps. But in all the other GPU benchmarks which are ran at 1080p it does come on top of the iphone.
  But in any case I personally prefer a phone that has a good battery life, it can fit in my hand and lets me do whatever I want with it. So that rules out the note and the iphone ;)
  
  --
  Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
3. Re:All of this and the benchmarks are still subpar by Urza9814 · 2013-10-02 00:34 · Score: 1
  
  You are comparing a phone with a 4 inch screen, with a "phone" that has a 5.7 inch screen. You can't compare battery life when the screen is what uses up most of the power. If you want a huge screen you have to compromise on battery life (and many other things - seriously, the note is ridiculously big to use as an every-day phone).
  Hah...not related to the main point you're making, but I've currently got a Galaxy SIII, and after seeing my coworker's Note recently I'm pretty sure that's going to be my next phone. Seems big when you're reading the spec sheets, but in person it feels great.
  Of course, I *am* the kind of person who generally avoids using my phone as a phone. As long as it'll fit in my pocket, it's not too big.
  What I *really* want though is the Archos 5 IMT, resurrected as a phone with a modern Android version:
  http://www.anythingbutipod.com/archives/images/archos5ita/archos-5-imt-06.jpg
Benchmarks are bad metrics by onyxruby · 2013-10-01 07:04 · Score: 1

Benchmarks are problematic by their very nature in that they are typically predictable and a manufacturer can simply say they have tuned their product for a given application. Let me give a good example of this from a product that isn't made for consumer use just to make my point:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7165/ocz-announces-zdxl-pcie-sql-accelerator-ssd-solution
This is a PCIE SSD product designed to boot server performance explicitly for Microsoft MS SQL Server. This product has been explicitly designed to make a given product that is quite expensive work faster.
Is this product cheating because it has been tuned just to give better results in one application? What if OCZ released a version of the product that was tuned to detect if it was working on MySQL, MS SQL Server and Oracle and optimize performance accordingly? What happens when someone tries to use it on another SQL database and get's less than stellar performance?
For the typical Slashdot car analogy think of Ferrari, they have been accused of cheating on car tests for many years by setting up their cars for the exact track they were about to be tested on. What would happen if Ferrari (or another manufacturer) tied their systems into the car's GPS?
Think of the Top Gear episode where the Nissan GTR knew it had just been driven onto a racetrack and turned off it's speed limiter. You could just as easily program the car to have optimal settings for that exact track and then populate in as many race tracks as you could. Is that cheating or is the manufacturer anticipating the potential needs of their customers and tuning their product accordingly?
If everyone playing the latest Call of Duty get's the same benefit when they buy their card, than can you really say it's cheating? Through the use of patches you can continuously upgrade the card to be optimized with the latest games.
1. Re:Benchmarks are bad metrics by TangoMargarine · 2013-10-01 08:19 · Score: 1
  
  The difference is whether they admit up-front that it's been optimized for a specific application, or act like it handles *everything* better when that is not in fact the case.
  
  --
  Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
2. Re:Benchmarks are bad metrics by friedmud · 2013-10-01 13:50 · Score: 1
  
  As an aside - we just bought a couple of OCZ Revodrive 3 x2 (1TB each) cards and have been using them and benchmarking them over the last couple of days for scientific data analysis... DAMN they are fast! We're getting about 1.2GB/s (yes Bytes with a big B!) consecutive reads (which is was our main purpose happens to be).
  The only downside we've found is spotty Linux (which, along with OSX is all we use... no Windows here) driver support. We have to actually use the commercial drivers for the Vertex and ZDXL... which are only precompiled for specific Linux kernel versions. Other than that the cards have worked great!
  A bit back on topic - if this "turbo" mode were something any app could invoke somehow (with an API call for instance) then this wouldn't be a problem... but since they've only made it work with explicitly named executables it feels a bit underhanded....
3. Re:Benchmarks are bad metrics by onyxruby · 2013-10-02 01:35 · Score: 1
  
  I don't think it's so much of a case that they enable a turbo mode as much as they are able to optimize the hardware and drivers for a given application. If you know a given application requires a certain set of parameters in order to tune it than you might as well save that batch of optimizations and let your customers use them. I don't think there's anything inherently dishonest in doing this as anyone using that given application will benefit. How if your going into overdrive for a benchmark without disclosure that is inherently dishonest.
  That's what OCZ did with their card for use with MS SQL server. In this case they explicitly state the card as being optimized for MS SQL Server so their isn't anything dishonest going on. The problem comes from situations like yours where a customer is highly unlikely to ever come optimized fresh from the factory. How do you judge a neutral benchmark when your use case isn't one of the common ones and all of the review sites use the same sets of benchmarks?
Does anyone really look at Manufacturer's numbers? by macbeth66 · 2013-10-01 07:06 · Score: 1

Really? That's like using Slashdot polls for something important. Non-story.
8 years ago? by mveloso · 2013-10-01 07:08 · Score: 4, Insightful

It's hard to find info on it, and it was at least 8 years ago. So you're saying that Samsung's benchmark juicing today is like Apple choosing the Intel compiler with extra options back in the day?
This is what Samsung does, in pseudocode:
if app.name == benchmark speed up
This is what Apple did on its benchmarks:
# for G5
cc test.c -altivec
# for x86
gcc test.c
If you can't tell the difference between the two, you're either stupid, or Samsung.
1. Re:8 years ago? by AmiMoJo · 2013-10-01 09:35 · Score: 1
  
  Except that it isn't just benchmark apps, it's a whitelist of apps and games that includes some popular benchmark apps. The benchmark results reflect the real world results (as much as benchmarks ever do) with whitelisted apps.
  
  --
  const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
  SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
2. Re:8 years ago? by Sockatume · 2013-10-01 23:59 · Score: 1
  
  Actually in this case, the only whitelisted apps are benchmark apps. And in the previous Samsung case, the only whitelisted apps were benchmark apps and a few system functions such as the photograph viewers.
  Games have never received the Samsung speed boost.
  
  --
  No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Re:Failed to note by jeffmflanagan · 2013-10-01 07:43 · Score: 3, Informative

You're wrong. The optimizations were found to only run with the particular executables identified by name. Ars renamed the file, and performance plummeted. No app maker can modify the hard-coding in the OS that locks the CPU into high-speed mode. Samsung, other cheating manufacturers, and I suppose ROM modders are the only ones that can access that functionality.
The only meaningful benchmarks... by Minwee · 2013-10-01 08:00 · Score: 1

...are the dents left behind after drop-testing the thing until it breaks,
Anything else is just a made up number.
Here is your citation. by Ecuador · 2013-10-01 10:30 · Score: 5, Informative

Ok, I remember reading the Apple benchmarks myself (in utter disbelief - even for Apple it seemed too much), and this article you linked to does not agree with my memory. So let's go directly to the source. Read that benchmark paper yourself on archive.org : http://web.archive.org/web/20030727103031/http://veritest.com/clients/reports/apple/apple_performance.pdf
I gave it a quick look to refresh my memory and here are some highlights:
- They DISABLE hyper-threading on the SPEC rate test, which is the multi-processor test. Then, they ENABLE hyper-threading on the SPEC base, which is the single-processor test!!! They defend this by saying something like "hyper-threading is slower some times". Well, they sure know that, since they only enable it when it will slow down the Pentium! I would have given them the benefit of doubt if they had disabled (or enabled) it for both tests, but selectively enabling/disabling it means you know what you are doing.
- They use -O3 -fast -ffast when compiling for Apple, which uses fast math non-IEEE optimizations. Of course they had the Intel CPU run accurate/IEEE spec code - there is no equivalent -ffast-math used.
- They go on making some other "crazy" optimizations on the G5 like "modify CPU registers to enable memory Read By-pass", or installing a special malloc library that optimizes for speed by sacrificing memory just for the single-threaded benchmark. This is not how you benchmark for comparison purposes, especially if your optimizations for the competing platform are "turning off update" and "turning off hard drive sleep" (they obviously put that stuff just to pretend they "optimized" there as well).
And I am sure there are other things as well, this was from a quick read. And of course let's not mention that they compare the G5 with an Intel P4 CPU, when, at the time, AMD's Athlons/Opterons (64bit versions were just out as well) were destroying Intel (in performance, not sales - but that is another story).
In general, that paper is so ridiculous that I can't believe Apple had kept promoting it after they had been outed. But then again, given Apple's target audience, the explanation is simple. What was even more ridiculous is that when Apple started selling the Intel-based Mac they had kept for a while the section of their website that showed how much faster the G5 Mac was compared to Intel and then on the Intel Mac pages they had comparisons which showed how the Intel Mac is faster than the G5 Mac. No shame!

--
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
1. Re:Here is your citation. by Trogre · 2013-10-01 13:05 · Score: 1
  
  And yet you haven't been modded up yet.
  I guess Slashdot's pro-apple reputation is alive and well...
  
  --
  "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
2. Re:Here is your citation. by Ecuador · 2013-10-01 16:31 · Score: 1
  
  Not sure if an AC is worth responding to (esp. one that sounds like a dick), but here goes.
  
  Dude, you are being ridiculous. A few quick examples...
  1. Your comments re: hyperthreading arbitrarily exclude the possibility that the settings they used were okay. Hyperthreading on Pentium 4 was weird. Sometimes it hurt when you wouldn't expect it to (e.g. 2 threads slower than 1), and when running a single thread it was often neutral.
  By definition, hyper-threading adds overhead to single-threaded tasks. At best, the overhead is imperceptible. So, they go and ENABLE HT for SINGLE threaded, where, at best it hurts just a little, but at the same time they DISABLE it for multi-threaded where it might have helped. Yeah, I could buy enabling/disabling for both cases, but enabling specifically for single-threaded means you are trying to hurt performance.
  
  2. Compiler flags -- You are crazy if you believe different compiler flags are 100% equivalent across all combinations of compiler and target CPU. As in, the optimizations made by turning on -fast on Apple's custom G5-targeted GCC almost certainly were different from -ffast-math on a more mainline GCC targeting x86. Different CPUs often have very different IEEE compliance shortcuts, with different performance implications.
  I did not say -fast would be exactly the same as -ffast-math. And both settings are not IEEE compliance shortcuts, but exactly the opposite - that's the whole point! So they gave the apple compiler the chance to optimize by relaxing IEEE, while they had Intel run without any such optimization. How is that comparable, you are comparing different tasks.
  
  3. Special malloc() libraries are de rigeur for SPEC benchmarking. Go check a few scores posted to spec.org. Notice how most of them mention MicroQuill SmartHeap? That'd be a commercial memory allocator library which does have some general purpose uses, but is known to be tuned well for SPEC. That kind of SPEC gamesmanship sure isn't pretty, but it's common as dirt.
  Again (like talking to a wall) they used a special library ONLY for the G5. Furthermore, according to their own paper, the library they used is "unsuitable for many uses". So it is not a general-purpose library that they might ship a machine with, it is something specific for this benchmark and they only applied it to the G5.
  
  4. How dare they compare the G5 to the biggest commercial competitor. How dare they!!! (Yeah, duh, they'd have lost badly to the Opteron. BFD.)
  To be more exact, they compared biggest (not fastest) competitor from the previous year, with their unreleased CPU. ;)
  
  5. The "no shame" thing -- They compared G5 to Pentium 4, then they later compared Core 2 Intel Macs to G5 Macs. THE PENTIUM 4 IS NOT THE SAME THING AS THE CORE 2 YOU IDIOT. If you are at all conversant with developments in x86 CPU performance over the last 10 years, you should know that the Core 2 kinda blew away everything which came before it. The only lack of shame here is you, for making such a dumb statement.
  Thank you. You calling me an idiot must be some sort of compliment. Anyway, I guess you don't remember the G5 website with the comparison vs x86. Apart from benchmarks, it was touting all the features that Power PC had over x86, like AltiVec etc, which things the Core architecture did not change. I guess you have to find those documents Apple had made back then to see the irony - but I remember it was very surreal to switch from one Apple.com page to the other. Oh, and the first Intel Macs did not use a Core 2, but a Core Duo, which was about on par with the Athlons of the era.
  
  By the way, in all that ranting, you missed what was by far the most important bit of sandbagging Apple may have done against the P4 in that test: They used gcc. If you look at SPEC submissions for Intel x86 where it's obvi
  
  --
  Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Re:Humans will be Humans by aristotle-dude · 2013-10-01 11:29 · Score: 1

If someone is surprised Humans are willing to cheat, rip off, etc to get ahead... well you haven't really been paying attention.
Fixed that for you.
I wouldn't want people to unfairly categorize you as a racist moron.
Korean is an ethnicity and a culture. It is not a separate "race". I don't think anyone mentioned a race anywhere. Is it not fair to comment on attitudes of certain cultures when it comes to honesty? Sure, it is stereotyping but, again, it is about a "culture" rather than a "race".

--
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
What fanboys. Where. by Uberbah · 2013-10-01 11:47 · Score: 1

If this was Apple, people would react the same way they are now.
* fanboys would defend blindly
Why not Santa Clause or the chupacabra while we're talking about things that don't exist? All kinds of people like to bitch about "Apple Fanboys" on Slashdot, but can never point to any examples when pressed.
Re:Humans will be Humans by GlobalEcho · 2013-10-01 11:48 · Score: 1

Samsung has been known to be unusually corrupt, even for Korea, for quite a while. Here are some links to discussions about it
http://lanle.wordpress.com/2010/04/28/book-on-samsung-divides-korea/
http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/30/3709688/samsung-25-years-lee-kun-hee
Somebody tell the MobileBench group by Plumpaquatsch · 2013-10-01 11:53 · Score: 1

http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/26/mobilebench-benchmarks-samsung/ - "MobileBench group aims to improve mobile benchmarking, recruits Samsung but lacks Qualcomm, NVIDIA "

--
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
No. It's a riff on the long running meme... by Uberbah · 2013-10-01 12:22 · Score: 1

Are you implying that us android users wouldn't be "up in arms"?
...on Slashdot where if Apple does something remotely questionable or unpopular, half a dozen people will pop in to say "now if this were Microsoft you'd all be up in arms".
You could even have most people calling Jobs an asshole, like when they pulled IDG books from Apple stores in a fit of pique over "iCon", but you'd still have the finger waggers come in saying "Now if this were Microsoft..."
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise by L4t3r4lu5 · 2013-10-01 19:48 · Score: 1

This is like car manufacturers taping up all of the air intakes and door seams when they do the fuel economy runs. Everybody knows the numbers are cooked. Nobody expects your 3L V8 to actually get 30mpg, ever.

--
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Awesome Samsung Phone by Meerathakur1990 · 2013-10-01 23:28 · Score: 1

I use Samsung mobile phone S4, really i liked the features of this smart phone. i think, it is better than Galaxy Note.
Re:Failed to note by Derek+Pomery · 2013-10-02 00:08 · Score: 1

So what we need is a small "App Launcher" app that does one-touch symlinking of an arbitrary game to the benchmark app name. :)
Maybe multiple benchmark app names, although who would run two demanding apps at once.
Until that exists, can just do it manually I 'spose.

--
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"' /. ate my old sig. Bastards.