News - Samsung's Galaxy S4 features a "BenchmarkBooster"

[HEXUS]

Clocks up CPU and GPU past usual limits when certain benchmark programs are run.

Read more.

[crossy]

The conclusion is that Samsung is optimising the Galaxy S4 performance to run repeatable optimal results in popular benchmarks. Anandtech suggests that Samsung either allow these boosted settings for all users/apps or remove them and also stop wasting time on optimising for benchmarks and just optimise for user experience. It will be interesting to see any official response from Samsung about this sneaky behaviour.

Utterly agree with Anandtech - although surely the overclock that they did would be achievable via certain apps? Does anyone - other than hardcore mobile nerds - play any attention to these benchmarks anyway? I'd consider myself fairly technically literate but I've no idea what scores my Galaxy S3 gets, and they played absolutely no part in my buying decision.

Although they're not important, the fact that Samsung apparently saw the need to "game" the benchmarks stinks to me. At this rate my S3 will not be replaced by an S5 - might defect to Nokia or Sony, especially if/when the latter actually starts putting an up to date version of Android on their Xperias.

[watercooled]

That's the point though, certain benchmarking apps are explicitly whitelisted by Samsung to use the full clocks, if it's not whitelisted you get the lower clocks.

Like you say, the fact they've spent effort on deceiving people is bad enough by itself - they obviously saw the benchmark scores as an important enough.

Also, it doesn't look like the Snapdragon version actually clocks higher than usual, rather it plugs all cores and holds them at their normal max clocks.

Anyway, hopefully the media kick up enough of a stink about this to prompt a resolution from Samsung, and discourage other MFRs from doing the same. Again though, as we say with the recent skewed Antutu results when comparing between architectures, you can't ultimately trust a couple of synthetic benchmarks!

[AlexKitch]

Shame on you, Samsung.

[jnutt]

Tee Hee

[GaryRW]

I've no idea what scores my Galaxy S3 gets, and they played absolutely no part in my buying decision.

shhhhhhhh! How can you claim the cost of your handset back from them in a class action if you say that?

I guess it's the same as most/all big companies - you can't trust them. I'd be interested to see whether they have referred to any of the benchmarks in their marketing. I doubt this kind of thing would creep into trade descriptions etc... by itself (although it's obviously designed to mislead), but it might be taken more seriously if they also advertised the results obtainable, claimed it scored higher than other phones etc...

[Odeas]

I more see it as "here's how fast this phone could go" and then "but we'll limit you to x to stop you killing it".

Probably done to stop games etc causing too much heat/battery drain.

Sneaky stuff though.

[spl]

I wouldn't expect anything less from Samsung. This is the company that paid students to post negative comments about HTC phones underperforming, crashing etc.

[NecronomicoN]

Rolling my eyes over this "controversy", seriously. Samsung found a way to optimize the phone for benchmarks and it's called a "cheater". Is there a regulation somewhere that says they can't do this?

How about... STOP USING OFF-THE-SHELF BENCHMARK PROGRAMS. This is sounding like the SSD dialogues from a few years ago, regarding Sequential read/write vs Random.

[kalniel]

Rolling my eyes over this "controversy", seriously. Samsung found a way to optimize the phone for benchmarks and it's called a "cheater". Is there a regulation somewhere that says they can't do this?

No, they can be "money grabbing cheaters" as much as they like or don't like. But it's important we know the score so we can take their other claims with the scepticism they now deserve.

How about... STOP USING OFF-THE-SHELF BENCHMARK PROGRAMS.

Why do you think those benchmark programs are on the shelf in the first place? The point of a benchmark is a standardised test that also saves the reviewers work. If everyone used different benchmarks all the time then you wouldn't be able to compare the results. That makes then a tempting target for cheating.

This is sounding like the SSD dialogues from a few years ago, regarding Sequential read/write vs Random.

I don't recall any problems with SSD benchmarks and cheating.

[NecronomicoN]

I can't call Samsung a cheater. Not until someone shows me a scan of the Standardized Benchmark Rules & Regulations agreement that Samsung signed before building the phone. It's misleading, I'll grant you, but not against any rules whatsoever.


PS.. I don't actually care one way or the other. I just got home and needed something to rant about after a crappy day.

[kalniel]

Cheating in this instance would be the same thing as misleading people over the expected performance of the phone. If you artificially increase the performance of the phone in a benchmark over a similar task that the user would expect to have a similar performance compared to the benchmark then you are cheating the benchmark.

edit: sorry to hear about your day

[NecronomicoN]

edit: sorry to hear about your day

Thanks.

The best thing Samsung could do in answer to this is allow the user an overclocking utility with the phone.

[neonplanet40]

Nvidia and amd have done this for years. Who cares?

[crossy]

The best thing Samsung could do in answer to this is allow the user an overclocking utility with the phone.

I was going to laugh at you for suggesting this, but then I actually thought about it and you might have a point. How would it be if Samsung's next firmware had - hidden in the developer options of course - a set of overclocking settings. Ideally, what would be nice would be some kind of cpu control on a per app basis - so you could upclock for those FPS that you've got installed but conversely downclock for mail apps etc. After all if they can do that for benchmark programs, then surely it's not rocket science to make that feature more useful for those of us who aren't into numerical willy-waving?

Oh and of course cover themselves with a checkbox to say "If you use these options then (a) you need to know what you're doing, and (b) don't yell at us if you melt your phone".

Like Kalniel, I also empathise over your dog egg of a day - I hate working from home when the kids are on holiday!

[NecronomicoN]

Well, what I meant with the OC utility is that the user could set it to a specific, consistent clock. If it then wandered into the hands of a reviewer doing a benchmark, they could just clock it to the same level as the competitor, and perform tests that matter (irrespective of clockspeed).