Huawei has been caught while artificially boosting the performance of some of its devices while running 3DMark, which is a popular benchmarking app. UL, the company which created the benchmarking application, has delisted P20, P20 Pro, Nova 3 and Honor Play after they were found to be artificially boosting their performance while running the benchmark test. The behavior was noticed by AnandTech and was later confirmed by UL in a press release that Huawei was cheating on the benchmark and its phones were detecting the benchmark applications to boost their performance. As a result, 3DMark has removed these phones from its leaderboard and updated their listings on the website with a note stating that ‘the phone’s manufacturer has not complied with UL benchmark rules.’
Huawei has admitted using AI to boost their performance based on certain intensive tasks which might be able to explain how the benchmarking app experienced the artificially increased performance. The testing done by UL shows that a private version of 3DMark application experienced no such spikes in performance. This has questioned Huawei’s claims of using an AI which is smart enough to recognize hardware usage to modify its performance automatically.
Huawei is not the first phone manufacturing company which has artificially enhanced the benchmark scores. Samsung has also been found previously forging the phone’s performance during the benchmarking process which has raised further questions about the authenticity and importance of benchmarking tools while checking a phone’s performance.
Huawei released a statement to clarify their position on the cheating scandal saying;
“Huawei always prioritizes the user experience rather than pursuing high benchmark scores – especially since there isn’t a direct connection between smartphone benchmarks and user experiences. Huawei smartphones use advanced technologies such as AI to optimize the performance of hardware including CPU, GPU, and NPU.
Huawei – as the industry leader – is willing to work with partners to find the best benchmarking standards that can accurately evaluate the user experience.”