Samsung Again Caught Inflating Benchmarking Scores, Phil Schiller Calls 'Shenanigans'

[r00fus]

I'm personally banning ALL samsung device in my house. Washer machine, ssd, screen, tv and ....

Scamsung.

I'm doing the same. I have a 23" monitor that's a Samsung and several old phones from my parents (since moved on to TMO iPhones .

The monitor was so annoying - didn't play well with my MBP display (par for course, ok) but when on sleep, the indicator light kept beeping a bright blue - really ANNOYING. I regret ever buying the thing.

I've heard all sorts of stories about their washers as well - won't be buying any of those. Because of the monitor, I won't be buying any TV from them either.

Why are they trying to dominate all markets - a sign of a predatory corporation. I didn't like Microsoft when they wanted Windows Everywhere either.

 

[Lindsford]

Always amazes me how many fan boys rush to the boards to defend their precious multi billion dollar companies. I love Samsung, I love Apple. But I will never play off how shady things like this are.

Average consumer wont make a purchase of a smart phone from benchmarks alone but regardless it's still unethical and because companies have done this before does not make it ok.

Samsung is more guilty then ever padding numbers, specially in their leading Led/hdtv market. They are a very shady corrupted company, but yet I still buy their products.... hypocrite right?

Short version: Stop running around trying to justify the dealings of multi billion dollar companies. They are almost as shady as our government.

/rant

posted from my Galaxy S4

 

[samcraig]

Scamsung.

I'm doing the same. I have a 23" monitor that's a Samsung and several old phones from my parents (since moved on to TMO iPhones .

The monitor was so annoying - didn't play well with my MBP display (par for course, ok) but when on sleep, the indicator light kept beeping a bright blue - really ANNOYING. I regret ever buying the thing.

I've heard all sorts of stories about their washers as well - won't be buying any of those. Because of the monitor, I won't be buying any TV from them either.

Why are they trying to dominate all markets - a sign of a predatory corporation. I didn't like Microsoft when they wanted Windows Everywhere either.

I guess you're banning your iPhone too? Samsung parts, my friend.

 

[pearvsapple]

All that power just to run fart apps.

 

[mdelvecchio]

This is nothing different than any other company, including Apple. Of course Samsung it trying to show the best case scenario, OF COURSE. APPLE DOES THE SAME DANG THING!

links, or it didnt happen. oops, you got none.

Someone please show me just ONE macbook pro that gets 5 hour battery life under normal use, let alone the "Up to 7 Hours" claimed. I have worked on 1000+ Macbooks, and they DO NOT EVER GET THAT BATTERY LIFE. PERIOD!! So Apple apparently tweaked whatever they could to come up with the 7 hour number. Clearly not realistic.

Anandtech disagrees with you:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-macbook-pro-with-retina-display-review/16

"Overall the rMBP pretty much behaves as expected. Apple claims up to 7 hours of battery life and using our light workload we see a bit over that. Fire up the dGPU and even a light workload will get cut down to around 5.5 hours. Moderate usage will drop battery life to around 5 hours"

pretty clear. per apple's website the 7 hours spec is for web use (light use). thats nowhere near the same as hardcoding the processor to perform better for benchmark apps only. nowhere near.

oh, and relax.

 

[apolloa]

It's actually even sadder if you don't get paid to post that stuff.

haha, I'd LOVE to be paid to post on forums! What an easy job! And you could do it from home.

 

[tanyet]

That's because its not using the booster mode. Which was the point of the entire shenanigans. And my point. Your daily usage and how well the device runs games, etc. THAT is what users want benchmarked. The booster mode is unsustainable and only there to spike the score.

I was speaking about the UI jankiness and performance issues you mentioned. It's been blazing fast and lag free (which is incredible for a samsung/android) device). Maybe in a few months it will start to creep but right now it's butter smooth.

 

[neoelectronaut]

Apple executive Phil Schiller -- senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing and the most prolific tweeter amongst Apple's senior staff -- linked to the Ars article in a tweet, saying only "shenanigans".

Soooooo..... the executive Of Apple publically slanders it's biggest supplier of components, wow, School boy tit for tat is the Apple way these day's then? They are fast becoming even more hypocritical and truly unprofessional and immature than ever now.

I do hope one day samsung would just tell Apple to F Off! Or perhaps Apple feels it MUST slander the competition now seeing as iOS7 is an utter disaster and making people literally sick! Can't remember the last Galaxy smart phone that made people physically sick?

Oh and yeah I work for Samsung and get paid tons of moolah for posting stuff on here

Holy cow, it's just a cell phone, calm your tits.

 

[iSee]

The camera using this mode makes a lot of sense and I'd be willing to bet this type of code existed prior to the S4 and Note 3- just that it was modified to include benchmarking in these devices.

There's no denying that 1.) the camera runs hot when used - especially when shooting video and 2.) the stock camera is disabled at 10% or under battery but other camera apps can be used.

These two experiences prove, at least to me, that the app is running in a 'special' mode that requires more horsepower, a la what they are attempting to do on these benchmarking scores. Which also proves a real world usage, and NOT just to 'fake' benchmark scores.

Does it really not bother you that the trigger for "fast" mode is the app's package name and NOT the workload it runs? That the benchmarks run 20% faster, but the OS and vast majority of other apps do not?

Why not let the apps opt-in, like with the camera app?

Then it would be up to the benchmark (which might pass the option on to the user). If the purpose is to get a sense of how fast the phone is compared to others the benchmark runs in the same mode the OS and other apps run. If the purpose is to see how fast the underlying SoC can run, the benchmark runs in "fast" mode.

They allow the camera app to opt-in? Why not let the benchmarks do the same -- or any app, for that matter?

It's pretty clear they want to make their performance benchmark numbers look good, without killing their battery benchmarks (or making the phone bigger/heavier/more expensive).

 

[JQW]

Cheating in respect to benchmarks has gone on for many years.

Back when Windows 3.1 was current, Ziff-Davis produced a benchmarking tool which was used by their various magazines for evaluating the graphics performance of Windows systems. The benchmark ran a series of tests, including drawing polygons.

One graphics card manufacturer (I forget which one, although I presume they're now defunct) was found to have hard-coded into their driver code to ensure the particular tests from this benchmark ran as quickly as possible.

For example, in the case of the polygon test, for example, the code was optimised to draw the specific types of polygons as used in the benchmark to the detriment of all others. For another test that repeatedly wrote the same string to the screen over and over again, the actual string itself was discovered embedded in the driver, and the various font renderings for that string as used in the benchmark were there too.

 

[Renzatic]

Hardly a surprise.

Now I have to get back to my full time paid job posting anti-Apple and positive Samsung comments on various forums

I don't remember seeing you at the meetings.

 

[Exponent]

Anyone else notice that the Note 3's 'normal' mode has a higher overall score than the iPhone 5S? Per the results on MacWorld.com. I didn't buy Geekbench app and test myself. Only like 2 points though.

Yes, at the present time, I scratch my head at the choice to go 64-bit over multicore. I presume Apple has benchmarks that show churning through data 64-bits at a time made more sense, despite the (typical) memory access size and speed hits.

 

[cclloyd]

What? Multi billion dollar corporations lying? I have never heard such blasphemy!

It's simple. The more money you have, the more you lie.

Take the government for example. Trillions of dollars. Trillions of lies.

 

[Zerilos]

Fixing benchmark scores...just doesn't sound like something Samsung would do. It's as unbelievable as suggesting that Samsung would pay celebrities and even college students to badmouth their competetors products via Twitter and Facebook.

 

[Michael Goff]

News sources never mentioned antennagate? foxconn? tax dodging? tracking your location? e-book price fixing? None of those were ever on the news? oh, ok.

You're comparing something that negatively affects nobody to all of those things that negatively affected people. Those were news because they were newsworthy. Somebody cheating on a benchmark is not.

You serious? No way, all the news media will be all over Apple and made front page news out of this.

Not really.

This may be a bit fanboy-ish, but....



How is it not innovation? Read some of the 64-bit benchmarks floating around and how some app developers have leveraged it. It may sound like just specs on paper, but there is a significant speed increase in real world usage which will only keep getting more pronounced as apps are rewritten for 64-bit. I definitely notice it in a lot of audio/video creation apps I use.

What constitutes "innovation" for you?

I'm not saying that the move to 64-bit isn't nice. It is, and iOS will benefit from it. I'm saying that it isn't innovation to go from 32-bit to 64-bit. Intel Atom did that last year. I can get a 64-bit tablet today running on atom. The move to 64-bit it an expected evolution

You think they doubled the performance at the same clock rate... by just adding 64-bit? They have an entire CPU design team and an architecture license with ARM (only other licensee I know of in the mobile space is qualcomm). There is a lot of innovation in JUST the A7, certainly more than snide forum posters care to understand.

Oh, so they made it 64-bit while making it faster. I'm sure it's also innovation when Samsung moved from 2gb of RAM to 3, because it made it faster.

Michael, you aren't paying attention, are you?

I have been.

Have you?

 

[duffman9000]

Someone please show me just ONE macbook pro that gets 5 hour battery life under normal use, let alone the "Up to 7 Hours" claimed. I have worked on 1000+ Macbooks, and they DO NOT EVER GET THAT BATTERY LIFE. PERIOD!! So Apple apparently tweaked whatever they could to come up with the 7 hour number. Clearly not realistic.

Take off your fruit shades. Let Apple win with better products, rather than with their executive donkeys.

As always, it depends on the use case. My 2011 MBP can about 5 hours: I'm logged from home via SSH into my system at work. Add playing music and browsing using Safari without Flash.

 

[Doomtomb]

I'm personally banning ALL samsung device in my house. Washer machine, ssd, screen, tv and ....

Better ban your iPhone bro!

 

[dugbug]

I was speaking about the UI jankiness and performance issues you mentioned. It's been blazing fast and lag free (which is incredible for a samsung/android) device). Maybe in a few months it will start to creep but right now it's butter smooth.

My apologies, I misunderstood you.

 

[iChrist]

I'm sure you could have said the same without insulting. Manners and education still matter.

As a VP, Phil shows no tact or intelligence to the public. It damages Apple's image.

 

[iGrip]

I don't have this choice. I'll still be buying iphone and ddr memory.

Yes you have a choice. And you choose to use Samsung components.

 

[dec.]

Fixing benchmark scores...just doesn't sound like something Samsung would do. It's as unbelievable as suggesting that Samsung would pay celebrities and even college students to badmouth their competetors products via Twitter and Facebook.

But Samsung did promise to cease all such activities!!

 

[BruceEBonus]

Holy cow, it's just a cell phone, calm your tits.

I fully agree there ... and an overrated one at that ... !


Take a look at this. What is it? Just a tech forum? Look again. its a discussion about a communications device made by Apple - no more than that. But the fact is : if you showed a photo of its nemesis (a Samsung ) to any reader on here they'd actually try and attack that photo in an attempt to smash it. That's the kind of fanatical mindset we're dealing with here.
Those of a nervous disposition, limited technical knowledge or both would be advised to steer well clear of the thread until it is safe to do so.

Thanks!

 

[Zerilos]

Anyone else notice that the Note 3's 'normal' mode has a higher overall score than the iPhone 5S? Per the results on MacWorld.com. I didn't buy Geekbench app and test myself. Only like 2 points though.

According to Ars Technica (who broke this story), the unmoddified Geekbench 3 score is 2487 on the Note 3. According to anandtech, the GB3 score of the 5s is 2567. The MacWorld score has it at 2485. TheDroidguy.com has it at 2500 on the nose. Not sure why there's a discrepancy. I do know that anandtech runs their tests multiple times and publishes the average result.

 

[dayalprem]

Use the "Benchmark"

This is a great thing for the people making Apps, just use the word Benchmark and the CPU will give you more power

 

[Zerilos]

But Samsung did promise to cease all such activities!!

Did they really or was that sarcasam?