OnePlus, Meizu caught cheating on benchmark tests: Report

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Companies cheating on benchmark scores by tweaking the processor to get a better performance is nothing new. Even major players like Samsung, have been accused in the past of modifying their phones and the SoCs to get higher benchmark scores. Now XDA Developers has reported that OnePlus and Meizu have been tinkering their benchmark performance, and specifically targeting these applications to get higher scores.

So how did XDA Developers figure out that OnePlus and Meizu were cheating on the scores? The report says XDA Developers editor-in-chief Mario Serrafero noticed in case of OnePlus 3T some apps were “not falling back down to their normal idling speeds after opening.” XDA found OnePlus 3T’s core stayed at higher speeds, even at zero per cent CPU load, and it looked like the company was specifically targeting benchmark applications and packages.

XDA worked with GeekBench to create a ‘Secret’ build of the app, but named it ‘Mini Golf.’ The test scores and thermal throttling was different on the two builds, depending on the application. In the regular apps, the thermal throttling was at much higher temperature when running the benchmark apps, while it was lower in the ‘secret build.’ XDA has put out detailed charts indicating the difference in thermal performance and scores as well.

The report also found something similar in Meizu phones, when they tested this special build on other devices. It adds Meizu gets the “phone to switch to using the big cores when certain apps are running,” in order to improve their benchmark performance.

OnePlus responded to XDA’s report and said it would stop cheating on the scores and issue a new update to OxygenOS for OnePlus 3, OnePlus 3T to fix this.

The full statement reads “In order to give users a better user experience in resource intensive apps and games, especially graphically intensive ones, we implemented certain mechanisms in the community and Nougat builds to trigger the processor to run more aggressively. The trigger process for benchmarking apps will not be present in upcoming OxygenOS builds on the OnePlus 3 and OnePlus 3T.“