Don’t Trust Benchmarks for Budget Android Phones
Hardware reviewers, manufacturers, and users love to evaluate the capabilities of their devices. While it’s funny, and sometimes surprising, to see the technology perform when it’s pushed to its limits, you should probably ignore the check digits from smartphones with MediaTek chips.
According to in-depth testing by AnandTech , MediaTek processors are designed to make their own benchmark performance appear more powerful than it actually is.
How MediaTek is promoting mobile tests
Basically, some MediaTek processors have code that can recognize when standard performance testing apps are running on your phone. When you run one of these apps to test your phone’s performance, your device will automatically overclock its hardware to beyond safe limits, focusing all its efforts on getting the best possible test results. It is so simple. Anandtech noticed suspiciously high numbers when testing MediaTek phones, which led to further testing and eventually the discovery of hidden code snippets that made the results possible.
Why is it so important to play by the rules?
To be fair, smartphone benchmarking tests are rarely representative of normal user experience, but they are often used in general hardware comparisons. As Android Central points out, it doesn’t really matter if you paid $ 500 or $ 1,500 for a phone, as long as its processor can handle Android OS and your apps well.
By most metrics, the MediaTek processor can handle normal smartphone functions fairly well. The problem, however, is that MediaTek’s fake numbers are essentially false advertisements, making phones equipped with their chips appear more powerful than they actually are.
In the past, phone makers have made bogus benchmarking allegations, but this is not the case with MediaTek: instead of making the phones themselves, the company lends the processors to other companies, and dubious code is embedded into MediaTek’s processors before they are installed. This means that numerous companies using MediaTek processors, including LG, Motorola, Nokia, Oppo and Xiaomi, could unwittingly advertise inaccurate test results.
Following Anandtech’s research, Oppo has removed the test fake code from its devices and we hope other manufacturers will follow. Either way, it’s a good idea – not to trust MediaTek’s phone benchmarks – and to be honest, don’t worry too much about testing in general. If you’re buying a budget phone, you already know that you probably won’t be able to use it for high-end gaming or augmented reality tinkering. If your inexpensive device does a good enough job of basic tasks, doesn’t that matter?