Shenanigans!

Shenanigans!

Yes, we really like that word, but also, Samsung and others are totally participating in SHENANIGANS! And so we thought we should tell you about them. The SHENANIGANS!

The smart phone market is one wrought with lawsuits, competition edging on plain schoolyard bullying and lots and lot of money. Hence, the top competitors in the smartphone industry put a lot of work into making their product seem the best.

‘Seem’ being the operative word.  Sometimes, the competitors just wanna make sure it seem like their product is doing really well. Take Samsung, who recently have been caught artificially increasing the CPU speeds on it’s Galaxy Note 3 smart phone when benchmark apps are running. 

Benchmark apps are apps that measure the performance of your device and compare the scores with similar devices, in this case, other smartphones.

Ars Technica have found out that inside Samsung’s operating system on their smartphones sits a special little code. this little code identifies when benchmarking apps are being used, and in turn boosts CPU clock speeds and prevents CPU cores from entering low-power modes.

They’re big fakers, basically. In this specific case, anyway. Allegedly. And stuff.As a result of this special code, the Galaxy Note 3 benchmarks report CPU performance roughly 20 percent faster than most apps will experience on the device.

According to the guys at Ars:

“The difference is remarkable. In Geekbench’s multicore test, the Note 3’s benchmark mode gives the device a 20 percent boost over its “natural” score. With the benchmark boosting logic stripped away, the Note 3 drops down to LG G2 levels, which is where we initially expected the score to be given the identical SoCs. This big of a boost means that the Note 3 is not just messing with the CPU idle levels; significantly more oomph is unlocked when the device runs a benchmark”.

AND HERE”S THE BEST BIT:

According to Apple exec Phil Schiller via Twitter-

“shenanigans”.

Awesome.

Now… Anandtech has published evidence suggesting that nearly all mobile manufacturers, WITH THE EXCEPTION of Apple and Motorola, use CPU/GPU optimizations to game benchmark tests.

WHAAAAAA? IT’S ALL A LIE!

“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. It’s a systemic problem that seems to have surfaced over the last two years, and one that extends far beyond Samsung.”

Way to destroy our trust and beliefs everyone except Apple and Motorola. What else can we believe in if not technical benchmark data? At least we have Captain Halloween coming soon. Gosh we love Captain Halloween. You know, the guy.

You know the guy.

Image courtesy of gsmnation