Oliver Haslam on October 21, 2018, 4:05 am

Oppo Find X And F7 Found Cheating Benchmarking Apps, De-Listed From 3DMark

Smartphone maker Oppo has had two of its smartphones delisted from the popular benchmarking app 3DMark, after it was determined that the phones were configured to artificially provide improved scores during benchmarks.

Huawei was recently called out yet again for similar cheating tactics, and we’re sure that Oppo will not be the last.

According to tests carried out by 3DMark maker UL, the Oppo Find X and Oppo F7 were both detecting when the 3DMark app was being run, with the phones identifying the Google Play Store version of the app by name. Once they knew that 3DMark was running, the phones redirected resources to the app, inflating the score the two phones received as a result.

UL conducted tests using an in-house version of 3DMark – one that the phones would not identify – and found that they were scoring around 41% higher when the Google Play Store version of the app was used. As a result, both phones have been stripped of their scored and dumped to the bottom of the rankings.

Amazingly, Oppo admitted that it is cheating, although it predictably isn’t quite wording it that way. Speaking with UL, Oppo said that “when we detect that the user is running apps like games or 3D Benchmarks that require high performance, we allow the SoC to run at full speed for the smoothest experience.”

However, we do know that when Oppo’s devices are not able to detect an app by name and a higher load is placed on the devices, they simply run at the phone’s default power optimization levels, resulting in performance of around 80% of capacity.

The biggest question we have now is, which manufacturer will be the next to try its luck?