Samsung Caught Boosting Galaxy S4 Benchmarks 234
A recent forum post at Beyond3D made an interesting claim: that the Samsung Galaxy S4's GPU ran at 532 MHz for certain whitelisted benchmark applications, and at 480 MHz for everything else. The folks at AnandTech decided to investigate and found out that the phone does indeed let its GPU run at a higher frequency when particular benchmark software is running. They found a similar oddity with the CPU — it wasn't restricted for other apps, but it was forced to run at max speed during benchmarks. Then they decided to look for direct evidence that this was intentional.
"Poking around I came across the application changing the DVFS behavior to allow these frequency changes – TwDVFSApp.apk. Opening the file in a hex editor and looking at strings inside (or just running strings on the .odex file) pointed at what appeared to be hard coded profiles/exceptions for certain applications. The string 'BenchmarkBooster' is a particularly telling one. ... Quadrant standard, advanced, and professional, linpack (free, not paid), Benchmark Pi, and AnTuTu are all called out specifically. Nothing for GLBenchmark 2.5.1 though, despite its similar behavior."
Government Regulation (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot readers will remember this, and probably choose an S4 when faced with so few choices. Samsung sees no benefit to not skewing numbers in the future.
Re: And you think they're the only one why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Source, proof, evidence or STFU.
Re:And you think they're the only one why? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they don't. There is a difference between optimizing a system and overclocking just for specific benchmark apps. Samsung could get fraud charges on this one if they advertised or published the benchmarked speed. It is less obvious if they did not do the publishing themselves.
Sony, for example (Score:3, Insightful)
Yet they're largely poised to win the next "Console War" and they're still one of the premier names in the home entertainment business.
Companies have NOTHING to fear from consumer retaliation. Consumers are by and large stupid, with an extremely short term memory.
Re:Government Regulation (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:And you think they're the only one why? (Score:5, Insightful)
No different than how Samsung made tons of commercials poking fun of iPhone users. If you make a better product just show the product. If you make an inferior product then take cheap shots at the competition.
Yep. Apple would never make adverts poking fun at the competition...
Re:Official answer from Samsung (Score:5, Insightful)
That doesn't tally with the information extracted from the S4 code: it lists several benchmark apps, which when detected activate a "boost" feature that changes the CPU clock.
Re:And you think they're the only one why? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's nice. It's still unethical and should be treated as such.
Re:Official answer from Samsung (Score:3, Insightful)
That's because the app has to tell the phone to stop saving battery and start performing at it's most optimal speed and the danger is that if the benchmark apps aren't built to do this then the benchmark apps will only give a benchmark for the phones power saving mode rather than at it's optimal performance.
There's no overclocking going on, the GPU is rated for 533mhz so running at 532mhz in that configuration isn't any kind of fudge but a genuine representation of how the phone can perform at peak.
I think we should end this (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think we need to celebrate benchmarking phones, period. This was one of those flamebait trolling things that happened in the PC era where people boasted how superficially fast their beloved shoebox was by putting $10k worth of equipment into and liquid cooling it just to get some high number result in 3D Mark or some other meaningless program.
We don't need this for phones.
Yes phones play games, yes phones are getting faster, but realize that phones and tablets are a HUGE step back from the PC era in terms of performance so benchmarking them means you may as well drag out your dusty Pentium era PC and start boasting about good its benchmark numbers are.
Also when 80% of the apps on the Android platform are unstable POS then I don't care about how fast they crash. Even Chrome quits unexpectedly repeatedly and this is by the company that makes the Android platform on their own Nexus brand devices.
Re:And you think they're the only one why? (Score:1, Insightful)
So those Apple Commercials where the Apple spokesman is a "hip guy" while the "PC" guy is some nerd are not making fun of the customers?
Re:And you think they're the only one why? (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow. Did you even read the article. Or even the summary? They aren't doing this to ensure the device isn't running in power saving mode. The enhanced frequency is _ONLY_ available to benchmark tests. The code even refers to it as BenchmarkBooster. What do you possibly think BenchmarkBooster does?
Seriously, you are the personification of "fandroid" right now.
Re:Sony, for example (Score:4, Insightful)
Part of that is that unlike his predecessor (Stringer) - Hirai realizes that treating your customers like shit is bad for business.
Sony under Hirai is very different from Sony under Stringer - this is most obvious if you look at Sony Mobile, who are one of the largest contributors to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and the only manufacturer that actively maintains AOSP builds for some of their devices. There are numerous signs that, rather than squash the anomalous behavior of the former Sony-Ericsson, the rest of Sony is starting to adopt Mobile's ways.
Re:And you think they're the only one why? (Score:4, Insightful)
If no apps other then the benchmarker run at 533Mhz, then overclocking is a fair word even if the CPU is rated for 533Mhz. If even 20% of the apps were allowed to run at 533Mhz then I would say otherwise, but NONE of the other apps are allowed to run at 533Mhz, just the benchmarker.
It is fraud.
Re:Government Regulation (Score:5, Insightful)
And Samsung still wouldn't care, evidenced by past behavior (otherwise known as the best predictor of future behavior):
Samsung could face 15B Euro fine [bgr.com]
Samsung, LG fined for LCD price fixing [cnet.com]
Tax evasion, bribery, and price fixing: how Samsung became the giant that ate Korea [independent.co.uk]
Samsung agrees to plead guilty to DRAM price fixing, pay $300M fine [justice.gov]
6 Samsung executives headed to jail for price fixing [edn.com]
Samsung, LG fined for mobile price fixing scheme [techcrunch.com]
Everyone is holding these guys up to be some kind of saints in their battle against the evil Apple Empire, when they are thrice-convicted price fixers that screw their customers over at every opportunity, legal or otherwise; and try to screw the competition by suing over standards-essential patents that they don't license for FRAND terms (allegedly).
Samsung is not a friendly company, but I'll likely be modded down for saying so. Whatever, I've got the karma to burn.
Re:And you think they're the only one why? (Score:4, Insightful)
They're just making sure that even if the benchmark apps don't tell it to work in it's most high performance profile that it does
If I run a normal app (say, a game), does the GPU get this "most high performance profile" as well?
because the whole point in benchmarks is to give a benchmark of the optimal performance of a device.
The point of a benchmark is to give a benchmark of REALISTIC performance on a device, as a user would get under normal daily usage.