First, it was Samsung. Then, it was everyone. Cheating on benchmarks has become fashionable for OEMs, but AnTuTu may have an answer for them. In releasing their all new Benchmark X, AnTuTu hopes to end the madness while keeping their name and app relevant as an industry standard.
Noting that “A legal system operation optimization on devices is what we encourage, share the goal of tricking customers by cheating is what we are Firmly against”, the team at AnTuTu seems positively dismayed about what’s been going on lately. Without getting into any detail, AnTuTu claims their new app will look and act similarly to their existing one, but have some “camouflage tricks” in tow to fool would-be cheaters.
On their website, AnTuTu lays out what they know is happening, and what they consider the issues to be. From top to bottom, it seems that AnTuTu has been compromised by crafty OEMs looking to make headlines. Whether it be a flat-out lie or a lack of throttling for CPUs and GPUs, the benchmark maker is trying earnestly to thwart the efforts of the dishonest.
While AnTuTu didn’t share their method for alerting us to a faulty benchmark test, it’s nice to see some kind of check and balance in place moving forward. It’s also good to see AnTuTu humbly admit their service was compromised, and take the necessary steps to fix it and allow us to forge ahead with using them as a barometer for device performance. This is great news, but we wonder how long it could be until we’re down this same path again, with OEMs having figured out a way to cheat the new test.
