Samsung Fudging Benchmarks Again On Galaxy Note 3

[wraggster]

A few months ago, Samsung was caught gaming benchmarks on the Galaxy S4 (International version) (http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/07/samsung-defends-benchmark-boosting-because-it-boosts-other-apps-too/). 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 (http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/galaxy-note-3s-benchmarking-adjustments-inflate-scores-by-up-to-20/), 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.

http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/13/10/01/170237/samsung-fudging-benchmarks-again-on-galaxy-note-3