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Huawei Caught Cheating Performance Test For New Phones (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: UL, the company behind the tablet and phone performance benchmark app 3DMark, has delisted new Huawei phones from its "Best Smartphone" leaderboard after AnandTech discovered the phone maker was boosting its performance to ace the app's test. The phones delisted were the P20, P20 Pro, Nova 3 and the Honor Play. "After testing the devices in our own lab and confirming that they breach our rules, we have decided to delist the affected models and remove them from our performance rankings," the company said in a statement.

For the Huawei case, the rules are actually a little fuzzy. Phones are permitted to adjust performance based on workload, which results in peaks or dips in performance for different apps, but they are not permitted to hard-code peaks in performance specifically for the benchmark app. Huawei reportedly claimed that the peak in performance seen during the run of the benchmark app was an intuitive jump determined by AI; however, when an unlabeled version of the benchmark test was run, the phones were unable to recognize it and, as a result, displayed lower performances. In other words, the phones aren't so smart after all.

38 of 74 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Stop using foreign products by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    You DO know Apple phones are made in China, right?

  2. Strike two! by sizzzzlerz · · Score: 1

    Cheating and spying are no way to go through life, son.

    1. Re:Strike two! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Damn right. Let that be a lesson to Americans, because there is no other country that has cheated, rigged, lied, spied, and manipulated as much as America to get to where it is.
       

  3. AI by 110010001000 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Huawei reportedly claimed that the peak in performance seen during the run of the benchmark app was an intuitive jump determined by AI"

    Whenever someone makes an AI claim you know they are lying.

  4. Hardly seems worth it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you know what chipset is in a phone, then you know as much as you usefully need to know about the real world performance of that phone relative to other phones with the same chipset, i.e. pretty much the same. If you see a benchmark saying one such phone is outperforming its peers, then you assume that, if it's not down to actual cheating, then it's a quirk of the benchmark, because you know the same cpu/gpu at the same speed gives the same performance. Does anybody actually look at benchmarks when buying a phone?

    1. Re:Hardly seems worth it by Alwin+Henseler · · Score: 1

      What's more: using the same SoC, performance may still vary due to cpu / gpu / memory clocks. But higher clocks translate to higher power consumption. For a portable device, that means more battery drain. So even if you can run apps a few % faster, you'll only be able to do (roughly) the same amount of work before battery runs empty.

      In battery operated devices, you'll often see that components aren't clocked up to their highest possible spec. The above is one important reason for that. Local heating / stability issues may be another.

      Another way to bump performance is to add RAM. There's are some situations where more RAM may help performance without (much of) the battery drain penalty. But of course extra RAM costs $ and in many cases that's just not worth it.

    2. Re:Hardly seems worth it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I assume they either have connected the phone to AC with the charger, or not, and have not changed this aspect when testing with the original 3DMark app and then with a replacement named differently.

      This is cheating, and thus I will avoid Huawei/Honor in the future when making purchase decisions. It is the same pattern as with Volkswagen (VW).

    3. Re:Hardly seems worth it by Moof123 · · Score: 2

      "For a portable device, that means more battery drain. So even if you can run apps a few % faster, you'll only be able to do (roughly) the same amount of work before battery runs empty"
      Actually no. In the olden days the supply voltage was fixed, leakage current was low resulting in a constant energy per cycle for a given operation. In modern times the supply voltage is carefully adjusted with clock speed. Run the part down at 1V and it might only run at 1 GHz, crank it up to 1.5V and it goes at 2 GHz, but consumes about 4x the power and also has much increased leakage power.
      Cell phone SOC's go even further these days, containing both low power cores and high performance cores to further scale power savings across a wide range of operating scenarios. The low power core might be half the performance at a given clock rate, but a quarter or less the power.
      Firmware choices as to which cores to activate and what clock rate to run at can make huge difference net power consumption and perceived speed.

    4. Re:Hardly seems worth it by Desler · · Score: 2

      Not true at all. The same SoC can have a wide difference in performance due to differing thermal headroom depending on the device.

  5. Re:Stop using foreign products by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    There is no such thing as an American-made phone. In fact, there is almost no American-made anything when it comes to electronics. Prior administrations have allowed the manufacturing sector to move almost everything to enemy states.

    Make no mistake. If there were ever a war, the US would lose, and quickly, because we cannot maintain, repair, or build anything without China's help. We have nearly zero electronics manufacturing capability compared to what would be needed to prosecute a War.

  6. Re:Stop using foreign products by alvinrod · · Score: 2

    The U.S. still does a lot of chip design and fabrication. It's just that the chips get shipped overseas for packaging and final product assembly.

    Also, U.S. manufacturing output has been increasing year over year even though we were moving large chunks of it overseas. I think now would be a good time to start reinvesting in local manufacturing, but that would be done with machines. A lot of the jobs aren't coming back, but that's okay because it means that labor is free to do something that's more productive instead.

  7. Re:Stop using foreign products by kelemvor4 · · Score: 1

    Stick with Apple. Buy American, support American companies and the Americans they employ, and put your money where your mouth is.

    Don't you mean "Buy Chinese?" Apple phones are made in China, not America.

  8. Re:Stop using foreign products by Z00L00K · · Score: 1

    Alzheimer on devices - here we come.

    --
    If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
  9. Re: Stop using foreign products by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Could you remind me, when did the US stop being a foreign country?

  10. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  11. Volkswagon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    So now we know where ex-Volkswagen engineers end up.

  12. American made is a myth by sjbe · · Score: 1

    Stick with Apple. Buy American, support American companies and the Americans they employ, and put your money where your mouth is.

    Where do you think Apple products are made?

    There are very few products that are "American made" and you can say the same thing about every other country too. Furthermore brands are useless in determining where something was made. I have a truck that is Honda branded but it was the most American made vehicle in 2017 (yes more than the Ford F150. But the content in it is from all over the globe. The concept of "American products" or "Chinese products" is largely a myth for any non trivial product. Manufacturing these days is a global enterprise and few products have all their content (including labor) from a single country.

    Anyway if you want people to "buy American" then American companies need to make products people want to buy at competitive prices. I'm not going to buy something inferior and/or more expensive merely because it was made in the USA. American companies have to compete for my business just like everyone else. If my fellow Americans are as clever as we like to pretend then that shouldn't be a problem but the other 95% of the world's population has a lot of smart and hard working people too.

  13. Re: Everyone cheats in benchmarks by h8sg8s · · Score: 1

    No, not all car brands. VW/Audi/Porsche all had variations on the diesel emissions cheat. They're in a class by themselves.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    --
    Organization? You must be joking..
  14. Quack Quack Quack by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Quake/Quack3 was 17 years ago and people still haven't learnt.

  15. Re: Stop using foreign products by aliquis · · Score: 1

    Sucking gold songs?

    Also I'm Swede. I'm only allowed to buy political correctness and progressivism?
    Guess that's in line with the parliament. They think people talking bad about the situation of the country are traitors. Preferably forbidden.

  16. Re: Stop using foreign products by aliquis · · Score: 1

    Just build a wall against them. Call it the Chinese wall to make a statement.

  17. Re:Stop using foreign products by Killall+-9+Bash · · Score: 1

    Standing in a soup line is much more productive.

    Oh, no, wait,I forgot.... we're all supposed to re-tool for the new economy. Because businesses want to hire 40 year olds for entry level tech jobs....

    --
    "Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
  18. Re:Stop using foreign products by Killall+-9+Bash · · Score: 1

    Yep, those BRAND X phones are totally made in america.

    --
    "Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
  19. Heavens by guygo · · Score: 2

    Who wouldve thought the company that gives approval rights for their designs to the Chinese government would lie to us? But for sure there's no possibilty of any backdoors. Trust us!

    1. Re:Heavens by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Yeah because American companies would never cheat benchmarks or add backdoors. Right? RIGHT?

    2. Re:Heavens by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 1

      Ironically, a backdoor controlled by the Chinese government is no threat to me. What could they possibly do? On the other hand, the NSA having backdoors into my communications is a real threat indeed.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  20. Re:Stop using foreign products by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 1

    You DO know Apple phones are made in China, right?

    Name 1 that is manufactured in the USA.

  21. Re:Stop using foreign products by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 1

    Apple has an American design team, but outsources all production and is incredibly expensive....

    It be nice to see more American production, and maybe some mid grade stuff at a lower price point....

    Samsung's flagship phones are every bit as expensive as Apple's flagship phone.

    Now where's your Hate against Samsung?

  22. From the country that puts lead in children's toys by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Me Chinese. Me play joke. Me go peepee in your Coke.

    - Huawei CEO

  23. Re:Stop using foreign products by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 1

    The U.S. still does a lot of chip design and fabrication. It's just that the chips get shipped overseas for packaging and final product assembly.

    Also, U.S. manufacturing output has been increasing year over year even though we were moving large chunks of it overseas. I think now would be a good time to start reinvesting in local manufacturing, but that would be done with machines. A lot of the jobs aren't coming back, but that's okay because it means that labor is free to do something that's more productive instead.

    Ya know, for all the Apple-bashing around here, they have actually been doing manufacturing/final-assembly of at least one of their products here since 2013: The (often-maligned) Mac Pro.

    Granted, it's not the highest-volume product Apple sells; but even if it represents just 1% of Apple's nearly 20 million Mac units sold in 2017, that still represents a quantity of nearly 2 million units of $2k-5k Mac Pros per year (for an average yearly income of $5 BEELION in gross sales), which is a production rate and income that many a company would die-for. Not so bad for a "failed" product!

    And they are ALL at least Assembled in U.S.A

    https://www.macrumors.com/2014... ...and Apple is at least TRYING to make even more products in the U.S.A.:

    https://venturebeat.com/2018/0...

  24. Re: Stop using foreign products by fred6666 · · Score: 1

    At least many Samsung phones are made in South Korea

  25. But is this what GPU manufacturers have been doing by clockley(571021718) · · Score: 1

    But is this what GPU manufacturers have been doing for years?

  26. Re:But is this what GPU manufacturers have been do by Littleman_TAMU · · Score: 2

    Yes, it was wrong for them and it's wrong for Huawei now. Anandtech, HardOCP, Tom's, and others caught GPU manufacturers doing this and called them out just like now. Part of the reason for Anandtech's development of their own test suite was because they didn't completely trust that vendors weren't cheating the known industry benchmarks.

    So far as I know, the above sites are still looking for cheating and GPU manufacturers have stopped. They've at least stopped obviously cheating by looking for when a known benchmark is running like Huawei got caught doing. They may still be tuning for benchmarks, and not real-world performance, but that's why real-world tests like Anandtech and HardOCP do are still useful for me.

  27. Re:Why aren't all benchmarks run "unlabelled"? by Mister+Transistor · · Score: 1

    Then they would have not caught this current bullshit...

    --
    -- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
  28. Re: Why aren't all benchmarks run "unlabelled"? by Lanthanide · · Score: 1

    Yeah, this is my thought too. Except they should run it in both modes, so they can easily detect a discrepancy and hence a cheating attempt.

    They should be running the benchmark at least 2 or 3 times and averaging the results anyway, and so 1 or 2 extra runs with the unlabeled version, and see if the performance is out of line with the standard average, would not be increasing the overall test duration by much.

  29. Re: Stop using foreign products by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 1

    At least many Samsung phones are made in South Korea

    Since the OP was talking about AMERICAN production, that is a Strawman argument.

  30. Re: Stop using foreign products by fred6666 · · Score: 1

    Well he was talking about foreign production. The USA is as foreign to me as South Korea as I live in either.

    But unlike China, South Korea actually has decent wages, which I thought was the point.

  31. Re: Why aren't all benchmarks run "unlabelled"? by ole_timer · · Score: 1

    precisely - now we get the rash of oops - our benchmark was the result of cheating...we'll find the name of the engineer who was responsible...and force him to use our phone...

    --
    nothing to see here - move along