Benchmark Vendor Says Samsung, Sony Phones Inflate Gaming Tests
Primate Labs, the developer of the popular Geekbench 3 benchmarks, has confirmed that many Android smartphones are performing better under benchmarking conditions.
Late last year Ars Technica noticed that some Samsung phones artificially boost performance by up to 20% when running Geekbench 3.
Since then, Primate Labs has been working determining which devices "benchmark boost" and added a "boost detector" to Geekbench 3. The detector embeds a report in each Geekbench 3 result uploaded to the Geekbench Browser. After analyzing thousands of reports,Primate Labs determined that the following Android devices artificially boost performance when running Geekbench 3:
- Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014)
- Samsung Galaxy Note 2
- Samsung Galaxy Note 3
- Samsung Galaxy S 3
- Samsung Galaxy S 4
- Sony Xperia Z
- Sony Xperia Z Tablet
- Sony Xperia Z Ultra
- Sony Xperia Z1
- Sony Xperia ZL
On both Samsung and Sony devices the boost appeared in Android 4.3. Earlier versions of Android (up to and including Android 4.2.2) did not boost.
In order to combat benchmark boosting Primate Labs has decided to exclude results from these devices running Android 4.3 from their Android benchmark chart.
The good news is that Samsung has removed the benchmark boost from their Android 4.4 update.
Since then, Primate Labs has been working determining which devices "benchmark boost" and added a "boost detector" to Geekbench 3. The detector embeds a report in each Geekbench 3 result uploaded to the Geekbench Browser. After analyzing thousands of reports,Primate Labs determined that the following Android devices artificially boost performance when running Geekbench 3:
- Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014)
- Samsung Galaxy Note 2
- Samsung Galaxy Note 3
- Samsung Galaxy S 3
- Samsung Galaxy S 4
- Sony Xperia Z
- Sony Xperia Z Tablet
- Sony Xperia Z Ultra
- Sony Xperia Z1
- Sony Xperia ZL
On both Samsung and Sony devices the boost appeared in Android 4.3. Earlier versions of Android (up to and including Android 4.2.2) did not boost.
In order to combat benchmark boosting Primate Labs has decided to exclude results from these devices running Android 4.3 from their Android benchmark chart.
The good news is that Samsung has removed the benchmark boost from their Android 4.4 update.