OnePlus and Meizu have been caught manipulating benchmark tests to artificially boost their performance in apps like AnTuTu and Geekbench. XDA Developers has come out with a damning report that finds the OnePlus 3T and Pro 6 Plus guilty of using tricks to get higher scores.
Manufacturers attempting to cheat benchmark scores isn’t a new phenomenon by any means. Samsung and HTC were discovered raising CPU frequency when their phones detected a benchmark app a few years ago. The practice has died away since then, but it seems OnePlus and Meizu are still trying to game the system.
XDA Developers came across the OnePlus 3T using less-than-ethical methods when using Qualcomm Trepn and the Snapdragon Performance Visualizer to investigate how Qualcomm enhances the Snapdragon 821’s CPU clock speed when opening applications. The site noticed that some apps on the handset were not falling back down to normal idling speeds after being activated.
Also Read: OnePlus 3, OnePlus 3T now getting OxygenOS 4.0.2 update
The publication even worked in cooperation with Geekbench to get to the bottom of the matter. It eventually came to the conclusion that OnePlus was cheating by making its CPU governor more aggressive when it sensed benchmarking apps. This gave rise to an artificial clock speed in Geekbench that wasn’t present in the hidden Geekbench build.
XDA Developers went on to blast the Exynos 8890-powered Pro 6 Plus as well, proclaiming that it took benchmark manipulation to another extreme. While Meizu hasn’t responded to the site’s findings, OnePlus has promised to address the issue.
OnePlus explains away the twisting of scores by stating that they implement certain mechanisms in the community and Nougat builds to trigger the SoC to run more aggressively when using resource-intensive apps and games. The company is now vowing to get rid of this process in future OxygenOS versions for the OnePlus 3 and OnePlus 3T.