Last month it was discovered that Samsung, HTC and other mobile terminal manufacturers falsify benchmark results for smartphones, modifying the operating system to detect a benchmark application and increase CPU/GPU frequencies to higher than normal values. This creates the impression that the terminals are very powerful, but they operate at higher frequencies than usual, so the results are false, and those from Futuremark They've decided to eliminate the scores recorded by some Samsung and HTC terminals in the 3D Mark benchmark.
People rely on Futuremark benchmarks to produce accurate and unbiased results. That's why we have clear rules for hardware manufacturers and software developers that specify how a platform can interact with our benchmark software. In simple terms, a device must run our benchmarks without modification as if they were any other application. The platform may not detect the launch of the benchmark executable. The platform must not alter, replace or override any parameters or parts of the test, nor modify the usual functioning of the platform based on the detection of the benchmark.
Suspecting the two manufacturers of altering the benchmark scores, Futuremark took the precautionary decision to remove from its lists the scores recorded for two Samsung smartphones and tablets, plus two more HTC smartphones. Although it has been intensively discussed how wrong this strategy of Android terminal manufacturers is, it seems that some simply do not want to learn how to do business correctly, and this will affect them in the long term.
