UL, the company that created the 3DMark benchmarking program, which is available for phones, tablets and PCs, has removed some of Huawei's latest (and most powerful) devices from its list of highest scores after it was found that the results were "fake." The devices removed from the list are the P20, P20 Pro, Honor Play and Nova 3.
“After testing the devices in question in our lab, we confirmed that they violate our terms of service, and we have decided to remove them from our device performance ratings,” UL said in a statement.
Huawei's case, at first glance, is not so clear. Mobile phones are programmed to increase and decrease their performance depending on their use, but also depending on what kind of application (or applications) they are running. So it makes sense that there will be times when the device's processing power is used to the maximum, or at the minimum.
However, what was found in the case of these devices is that they are programmed to work at 100% when the specific 3DMark benchmarking application is running. UL came to this conclusion when it ran different tests with the same application in signed and unsigned versions. In the case of the unsigned version, the devices did not detect that they were running the benchmark App, did not work to their maximum capabilities, and showed lower results.
In short, smartphones are not as smart as we think they are.
Huawei is not the first company to do this, as Samsung made the same mistake in 2013. While a benchmark can give the user a rough idea of the power of a device, daily use of the device is what will show how capable and convenient it is.
