Huawei wants to make amends by offering customers a ‘performance mode’ on its phones after the company was caught cheating benchmarks.
An AnandTech report recently exposed the Chinese phone manufacturer’s less than honest practices. The Chinese manufacturer tweaked phone performance to excel in certain benchmark applications. Essentially, Huawei coded the chipsets in some of its phones to detect benchmarks in order to switch to a high-power performance mode.
The investigation noted the cheating behaviour primarily on the 3DMark benchmark. UL, the company behind 3DMark, removed the P20, P20 Pro, Nova 3 and Honor Play from its leaderboards accordingly.
Huawei claims it used AI to schedule tasks and performance in its chips, which is why the phone switched into a special performance mode.
Despite that, UL maintains that forcing the use of a performance mode when the device detects a benchmarking app is against the rules.
Huawei says that, out of “respect for consumer’s right to choose,” the company will allow consumers to manually turn on the performance mode. This option will come as part of the EMUI 9.0 update.
While the move may appease some consumers, it’s worth noting that performance mode highlights a bigger problem with the industry’s reliance on benchmarks.
Benchmarks are not always indicative of real-world performance. Furthermore, the numbers produced by benchmarks make for great marketing.
As such, it’s important to take benchmarks with a grain of salt. It’s far too easy for companies to tailor performance to benchmarks. The results often make the company look better without actually benefiting the consumer.
Additionally, a Reddit user recently revealed the company claimed a DSLR photo was taken with one of its phones.
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