Oppo joins the hall of shame; caught cheating on benchmark tests

Yet another major manufacturer has joined the hall of shame. Yes, Oppo has been found cheating on their benchmark tests. UL Benchmarks has delisted Oppo's Find X and F7 phones from its 3DMark charts after finding that the smartphones were artificially amplifying the performance.

In response, the company said that it has always stepped up things when it detected "games or 3D Benchmarks that required high performance," but claimed that the apps would run bore if the users have to tap the display every few seconds. UL, in turn, rejected the justifications.

Oppo hinted that it might change soon. The company was planning on "upgrading the system" and trying to "distinguish" between the needs of frequently used apps and what users wouldn't want to see. However, this doesn't necessarily mean that the company won't forge the benchmarks in the future.

This isn't the first time a major manufacturer has been accused of cheating on benchmark tests. We have already heard of HTC, Huawei, Samsung and other familiar names cheating to achieve high scores on benchmark tests.

Underwriters Laboratories (UL), the creators of the 3DMark benchmark test, previously accused Huawei of cheating on its benchmarks. UL ran a few Huawei devices using two different benchmark tests only to find out that the results differed drastically. The first test was the publicly available 3DMark benchmark, while the second was a private version of 3Dmark.

Since the results differ a lot, UL has accused Huawei of using a discreet 'performance mode' that overrides the phone's usual performance to deliver artificial scores for the test.

Following the claims, UL also delisted Huawei P20, P20 Pro, Nova 3, and Honor Play from its website. Huawei in its defense said that the amplified scores are a result of AI optimized performance under specific scenarios. But, in that case, the performance should show the same scores for other benchmarks as well. Instead, it's possible that Huawei had a performance mode explicitly for the 3DMark test.