Most Android brands cheat in benchmarks

Recent benchmark results by Anandtech show that almost all Android smartphone brands, excluding Google/Motorola, incorporate questionable optimization schemes to score higher in benchmarks!

As have been reported, Samsung was caught cheating through the new Samsung Galaxy Note 3 device. The cheat was elaborate in the sense that it incorporated optimizations targeting the GPU of the device. Now, Anandtech has revealed even more horrifying data, which indicates that almost all Android smartphones vendors incorporate illegal overclocking or optimization means on the CPU level to score higher in benchmarks!

The recent results show that with the exception of Apple and Google/Motorola, in essence all other vendors have one or multiple smartphone models on the market which has various cheats incorporated, aiming to score higher in benchmarks. The table below (adapted from the Anandtech data) summarizes the findings. Something which is astonishing is that while cheating alone is bad enough, the performance gained by the CPU cheats only boost the final scores by about 10%. How someone can trade 10% in higher benchmark score for a severely hurt credibility and trust is completely beyond logic. Hopefully, the market will respond and punish the cheaters through appropriate means.

In addition, it is worth to mention that smartphones have started to reach a point where benchmark scores alone do not carry much meaning. The smartphones today are powerful enough that most users will never experience any sluggishness or slow-downs regardless if the smartphone scores 100 or 120 in a benchmark.

Smartphone model	CPU	Cheats in benchmark
		3DM	AnTuTu	AndEBench	Basemark X	Geekbench 3	GFXB 2.7	Vellamo
ASUS Padfone Infinity	Qualcomm Snapdragon 800	No	YES	No	No	No	No	YES
HTC One	Qualcomm Snapdragon 600	YES	YES	No	No	No	YES	YES
HTC One mini	Qualcomm Snapdragon 400	YES	YES	No	No	No	YES	YES
LG G2	Qualcomm Snapdragon 800	No	YES	No	No	No	No	YES
Moto RAZR i	Intel Atom Z2460	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Moto X	Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Nexus 4	Qualcomm APQ8064	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Nexus 7	Qualcomm Snapdragon 600	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Samsung Galaxy S 4	Qualcomm Snapdragon 600	No	YES	YES	No	No	No	YES
Samsung Galaxy Note 3	Qualcomm Snapdragon 800	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	No	YES
Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1	Intel Atom Z2560	No	YES	YES	No	No	No	No
Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 Edition)	Samsung Exynos 5420	YES(1,4x)	YES(1,4x)	YES(1,4x)	YES(1,4x)	YES(1,4x)	No	YES(1,9x)
NVIDIA Shield	Tegra 4	No	No	No	No	No	No	No