UL Benchmarks removes Huawei smartphones from 3DMark for cheating

UL Benchmarks has removed several Huawei smartphones from 3DMark’s database because the manufacturer cheated to get higher scores. The company has confirmed the cheats with its own testing.

The P20 Pro, Nova 3 and Honor Play scored up to 47 percent higher on 3DMark benchmarks for cheating, says UL Benchmarks. The company has also removed the P20 from its database based on Anandtech’s previous findings.

Huawei says it wants to add a ‘performance mode’ in updates that users can enable themselves. As long as that default is turned off in benchmarks, this is allowed according to 3DMark rules. When that happens, the devices will reappear in the lists.

The software of the various Kirin 970-soc devices bypassed power consumption and temperature limitations. As a result, the phone consumes up to 9W when benchmarking. Almost all telephones are empty after an hour and a half with such use. The phones also got hot.

It is not the first time that Huawei has been caught cheating. For example, last year it supplied review copies of the P10 with ufs storage, but provided some consumers with the much slower emmc type. The manufacturer has also been turning down the brightness for several years now, a setting that cannot be turned off. Without intervention by testers, Huawei smartphones reach higher values ​​during battery tests on ‘fixed brightness’ than under normal circumstances.

Benchmark cheating has happened more often in the mobile market. OnePlus, Samsung and HTC, among others, have been guilty of this in the past. All the manufacturers caught have stopped cheating on benchmarks.